


To Weather the Storm

by EnricoDandolo



Series: History is our mother [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Attempt at historical authenticity, Background Femslash, Gen, Humanism, Mages and Templars, SET ON A SHIP, Swordfighting, hardcore andrastianism, row row row your galley straight into the other guy's, with footnotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-30 10:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8529454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnricoDandolo/pseuds/EnricoDandolo
Summary: In the mid-Exalted Age, Thedas is changing. The printing press -- war with the Qunari -- a new scholarly impetus -- deepening trade networks; all contribute to changing the fabric of Thedosian society. In the midst of it, the ambitious young captain of a templar war galley, eager to reach the frontlines, is recalled to Val Royeaux to ferry an influential mage, humanist and printer to the Divine's court. But his ideas could go far beyond all else in transforming the world ...





	1. Caput primum, qui de causa initioque itineris narrabit

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in the workings for about three years, and originally looked quite different. I first got the idea when I was playing Inquisition and saw a ship decorated with the Templar arms beached on the Storm Coast, but after about 5000 words I later discarded, this has lain dormant. I only picked it up again upon reading Michel Foucault's ground-breaking _Discipline and Punish_ this summer, and was thinking over how the sort of developments he described as happening in the policing and ordering of early modern French society might or might not apply to Thedas. At that point, I was already deep into the modern AU in which my other fics were set, and so this here became a bit of backstory.
> 
> I have endeavoured to be as precise and representative as I could of the world I seek to imitate, but seek your forgiveness both for any errors in historical accuracy that may have slipped in -- it is difficult to loose one's mindset from the present without deeper research than I undertook for this -- and for the insularity of the setting. Renaissance Europe was not neither as homogenous nor as isolated as one usually imagines, certainly less isolated than Thedas is, but I do not have the confidence to develop what societies lie outside the boundaries of Thedas with sufficient depth or nuance. Hence, this is perhaps more representative of people living on the Atlantic seaboard before the 1490s than of the Mediterranean in the same period. I have supplied footnotes, at times with recommendations to further reading which I hope you will find as enjoyable as I did.
> 
> The original text of this was set in Cardo, a typeface designed for medievalists and philologists. As it includes a wide range of special abbreviations in use for handwriting Latin during the Middle Ages, I have reproduced them in the chapter headings using transcribed spellings. If I get around to it, I might end up replacing them with scans of my own handwriting, and I do have some ideas for making that a bit more flavourful.
> 
> About the latter 30k words of this are the first part of my NaNo project. I've finished this fic and will be posting a new chapter every day.

> See how different my treatment of you is from yours of Epicurus, in your works at large, and especially in the _De Finibus._ You are continually praising his life, but his talents you ridicule. I ridicule you in nothing at all. Your life does awaken my pity, as I have said; but your talents and your eloquence call for nothing but congratulation. O great father of Roman eloquence! not I alone but all who deck themselves with the flowers of Latin speech render thanks unto you. It is from your well-springs that we draw the streams that water our meads. You, we freely acknowledge, are the leader who marshals us; yours are the words of encouragement that sustain us; yours is the light that illuminates the path before us. In a word, it is under your auspices that we have attained to such little skill in this art of writing as we may possess …

_Petrarch, second epistle to M Tullius Cicero, 1345_

_Caput primum, qui de causa initioque itineris narrabit_

Under the scorching midday sun of Antivan summers, blood dried quickly.

Throughout the morning, the people of the city had come to watch it. The fishwives of the Bartoletti had been first to arrive, setting up their stalls and laying out the day’s catch long before dawn. They did so every day: The Campo Santa Esmeralda was one of the city’s principal market squares, one of the places where the old adage of ‘if you can’t buy it in Rialto, it’s Fadestuff’ came true. At dawn, the fishwives had been joined by gangs of loitering Blight orphans and elvish[1] servants doing their masters’ shopping. By the fourth hour of the day – the twelfth, as they counted here – the square had been bustling with activity as fishmongers had been joined by merchants arguing out deals in a dozen tongues, water and wine dealers meting out refreshments, city magistrates and notaries keeping a watchful eye on the business going on, and a procession carrying the relics of the Blessed Daria, one-time grand cleric of the city, on the occasion of her feast day. Now the sixth hour, noon, had arrived, and with it all commerce had come to a virtual halt as the square filled up with what seemed to be half the city.[2]

Before the portal of the chantry, a scaffold had been set up, decorated with blue and gold bunting. Around the square, the most splendid tapestries and carpets hung from balcony railings and window sills, lending dignity and richness to the proceedings. The buzz of the crowd in the square ebbed and flowed, but for the moment the whole city had ground to a halt.

At the stroke of noon, the chantry doors opened, and the crowd erupted into loud jeering. In solemn progression, three magistrates in their black robes of office and a herald wearing the royal arms of King Azar ascended unto the scaffold, followed by a number of militiamen. Finally, a priestess emerged with the patient, the latter wearing only a hair shift. The jeering rose to tumultuous levels as the crowd pushed forward. Stones were thrown, one barely missing the priestess, and the militia were hard-pressed to keep the mob at bay as the patient was led up the scaffold. Finally, the executioner emerged.

The patient’s crimes were read out. He gave his last words, which were lost under the angry shouting of the crowd. Then, the patient was stripped naked and tied to the breaking wheel. Beside it, the executioner weighed a large steel cudgel in his hands. Soon, the king’s vengeance would be in full progress, and the enthusiastic participation of the crowd drown out even the patient’s screams as his bones would be broken, one by one. The following day, he would be quartered.

Knight-Captain Justine Celeste Genevieve La Tour de Montsalvat listened dispassionately from her vantage point on one of the balconies lining the square, her fingers drumming softly on the pommel of her sword. In truth, she wasn’t paying the proceedings all that much attention –this public demonstration of royal authority was for the plebs of the city, the rootless, idle poor. A reminder of the king’s vengeance and circus in equal measures – at once, it served to amuse and to rectify the social order by restoring the king’s honour in the eyes of the burghers. _She_ was a La Tour de Montsalvat, chevalier of Orlais and a captain of Andraste’s own knights. Quite plainly, she stood above this bloody spectacle.

Besides, she had her own issues to worry about. Her ship, the _Blessed Amalthea,_ had only docked in Rialto this morning, to take on supplies for the remainder of their voyage from the Order’s grand arsenal in Val Royeaux to Rivain. There, they were under orders to protect Andrastian shipping and prey upon the oxmen heathens’ ships to assist the ongoing campaign. Yet shortly after their arrival, a runner had summoned her here, to the elegant townhouse in Santa Esmeralda of what she’d been told was a prominent local patrician family.  The runner had not been able to tell her who, precisely, was sending for her, but Justine wasn’t going to forget her good manners over this.

Hence, she now stood on the balcony of a large dining room in the townhouse’s piano nobile, waiting for her hosts to meet her. A servant had offered her wine and some sugared sweets, but for the most part she had been left to wait on her own for the better part of the last half hour. In her mind, she was going over the preparations they had to make – in Ostwick, she had filled her hold with furs from Ferelden, which she had been hoping to trade in Rialto for the raw silk the Rivaini could print and dye with the most marvellous patterns. In Rivain, after their battles against the oxmen were done, she would take on spices and wines, and altogether could expect to make a tidy profit for the Order, her crew and herself. Of course, she first had to find a buyer for her furs and a seller of silk here in Rialto. Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue – the markets of Rialto were famous throughout Thedas, and she could personally attest that there seemed to be nothing under the sky that one couldn’t buy or sell in this city. If she was going to waste away the day here, however …

The sound of the door opening interrupted her thoughts. “Thank you for waiting, my child,” an elderly woman said behind her. Justine turned, saw, and bowed. “Your Grace,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

The grand cleric laid her hands on her shoulders. “Oh, let’s not stand on ceremony. Stand up straight, Justine, let me have a look at you.”

She grinned at that. “It is good to see you, too, Aunt Éselde. How have you been?”

“Growing old and cranky. Say, have you met Commander Alvise di Sammarlo yet?”[3]

A stout, olive-skinned, middle-aged man had walked into the room with the grand cleric. His dark hair and beard were greying, but he carried himself like a soldier. He was dressed well, but plainly: his hosen were pristine white, and the sleeves of his figured grey doublet were slashed and puffed in a fashion that had been fashionable in Val Royeaux years ago. Above the doublet, he wore a sword and a short red cape – in lieu of the cloak usual in colder climes – emblazoned with the flaming sword of the Templar Order. A plain black chaperon was draped over his shoulder, courtesy of the summer heat. This was a man of equal gravitas and wealth, it said. “I have not. It’s a pleasure, sir.”

They shook hands. “The pleasure is mine. I saw your ship sail into the harbour this morning. The _Amalthea_ , is it? She looks like a fine ship.”

Almost automatically, her back straightened and she could scarcely keep from beaming with pride.  “The finest in the order’s fleet, ser. The heathens won’t know what hit them.”

Her aunt cleared her throat. “Actually, that is what we wanted to talk to you about. Please, have a seat. Have you eaten yet?”

“Not yet? I was planning on grabbing a bite later from the market …”

The grand cleric very energetically shook her head. “No, no. That shan’t do at all, my dear. Sit.” _That_ was clearly a command, so Justine did as she was told. Her aunt sat to her left, at the head of the table, and the knight-commander across from her. “I have the Mosto family to thank for this house, by the way,” the grand cleric explained. “My palace is undergoing repairs after a fire last month, and the Mosti were kind enough to put their house at my disposal.” She clapped her hands. Justine noted with some surprise that her aunt’s fingers were far, far spindlier and wrinkled than she could remember, like birch twigs about to break. An elvish servant in white and red livery entered from a hidden door by the fireplace, her head bowed. “Have dinner served, girl. And have them uncork the good Trevisan. 98, I believe?”

If the elf gave a reply, it was lost in a sudden roar from the crowd in the square.  They must have begun breaking the criminal on the wheel. The grand cleric made a face. “Before you go, close the balcony doors.” Turning to Justine, she added: “Truly, that demon deserves it. And it is certainly true that the people need to see this; morals have degraded so much since the Blight. But that doesn’t make it particularly appetising.”

“What’d he do?” she inquired, more to be polite than out of any genuine interest.

“Parricide and arson. That beast killed both his parents and his brother’s family in their sleep, then set their house on fire to hide the evidence. He confessed under the strappado last week. It would never have been discovered, you know, if not for that intrepid Ser Tomaso, the new Royal Inquisitor. He actually went and investigated the crime himself – sifted through the ashes, talked to people – before anyone had charged anyone.”

Justine raised an eyebrow. “I’ve heard of that sort of thing. There was a judge in Val Chevin last year who charged criminals himself instead of waiting for denunciations.” She shrugged. “It’s a little odd. I mean, if judges bring charges, they’re automatically biased against the accused.”

“On the other hand, relying on people to step forward and accuse people doesn’t work if they’re afraid of reprisals, or if the guilty person is a powerful man,” di Sammarlo pointed out. “I believe it is Marcurio who wrote that the Ancients had a specific official in charge of investigating crimes or possible crimes and bringing them into the light of day – the Lucifex, he was called. That would be an enlightened state to return to, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

“Our knight-commander is something of a scholar,” Grand Cleric Éselde explained, a proud smile on her lips. “He reads both Tevene and Old Dwarfish as if they were Common. Oh, do tell my niece what you told me on the way here, about your new system of punishments for Antivan courts of law …”

The older templar gave a slight cough and looked away. “Her Grace likes to exaggerate my virtues, I’m afraid. I merely said that our current system of punishments is exceedingly arbitrary and quite barbaric. Rather, we should codify each crime and a prescribed sentence, so that evildoers will know exactly what faces them. And each crime should have a proper, related punishment that forces one contemplating it to immediately think of the consequences and shriek back from his grave sin. Thus, an arsonist would be burned at the stake, a murderer executed in the same manner as his victims died, an idling vagabond condemned to hard labour or a kidnapper to the dungeon. Every execution would become a stage play of natural justice, clear for all to see.”[4]

Justine leant back in her chair. She wasn’t particularly interested in the commander’s ideas on criminal justice, truth be told. “It sounds fascinating,” she said, trying to be diplomatic. “You, er, wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Oh, quite right.  You see, a courier from Val Royeaux arrived yesterday, anticipating your arrival … oh, there’s the food at last. What took you, girl? You embarrass me in front of my guests.”

The servant kept her head low as she placed “Sorry, Your Reverence …”

“You elves, always apologising. Sorry this, sorry that …” As the grand cleric harangued the elf about the evils of idleness, indolence and petty thievery, Justine’s thoughts swayed to what she’d said before the interruption. A raven from Val Royeaux? At once, she thought of her eldest sister, who had been with child when she left the capital – but no, they wouldn’t have sent a courier. Her mother? But maman had been fine, and had never been sick a day in her life …

Besides, if this was about her family, Commander di Sammarlo wouldn’t be here. No, this was business. And if her instincts were right, this was about the sealed envelope Admiral d’Allereux had handed her the day of the _Amalthea’s_ departure from the capital.

Finally, Aunt Éselde dismissed the servants and turned to her. “It’s hard to get decent servants these days. When I was your age, the elves were much less lazy, and they didn’t steal as much. I’d hire humans, but the wages they demand … You absolutely must try this capon though. My cook is a genius, by any standard.”

“Uh, thanks. You were saying … about the courier from Val Royeaux?”

It was Commander di Sammarlo who answered in her aunt’s stead. “The missive bore the seal of Her Perfection, the Divine, and was addressed to myself and First Enchanter Anselmo. By the Divine’s command, I’ve got new orders for you and the _Amalthea_.”

Intrigued, Justine leant forwards in her chair. She had yet to touch her food. Her current orders were to proceed to the Northern Passage and then unseal the envelope she’d been given. Beyond that, anything was a mystery. And while Justine was not prone to disobey orders, she was no fan of mysteries, either. “So what are they?”

“You are to take on one of my mages as a passenger, Enchanter Marsilio Cavalcanti. Once he’s aboard, you are to return to Val Royeaux immediately, so the Enchanter can present himself to Divine. Here, have it in writing.” He handed her an envelope of waxed parchment. The seal was broken, but appeared to be genuine. “Right now …”

“Whoa, hold on a moment,” she interrupted.  “My orders are to sail north, to fight the Qunari, not to play ferryman to some mage. Why can’t he just book passage on a trading ship?”

“Because it’s the Divine who’s asking, dear, not some preened-up pepper merchant. And when the Divine asks, speed is of the essence. Your ship is the fastest in the harbour right now, you know that.”

“More importantly,” the knight-commander added, “it is a templar ship. That means it’s safe.”

“Because he’s a mage?”

“What? No. Because he is _important_ , and a personal friend besides. Say, do you happen to own any printed books?”

She frowned. She didn’t read much, and when she did, she preferred the neatness of manuscripts. “An abridged Chant, I think. Maybe a few others in the family library. Why?”

“Because chances are, they were set and printed in Marsilio’s workshop. He’s been at it for five years now and these days has eight presses running day and night. The way he’s set up – with dozens of Tranquil each concentrating on doing just one task each, without distractions … his workshop can produce dozens of volumes every day, rubricated and illuminated by hand, each more alike, neater and more beautiful than anything you can find in the world’s best scriptoria.”

Leaning back, Justine crossed her arms. “Alright, so he’s a decent printer. What’s that got to do with me having to ferry him back to Val Royeaux?”

Aunt Éselde gave her a mildly scolding look and folded her hands. “Because that’s what the Divine commands. But the benefits Messer Cavalcanti could bring to all of humanity are immeasurable, you must see that. Just imagine, dear – in five years’ time, every village chantry and every peasant-priestess could own a Chant _and_ know how to read it. In twenty, every home in Thedas could have a copy, and every child know how to read it. And once this is done …” She closed her eyes, launched into a sing-song chant. “ _From every corner of the earth / the Chant of Light echoed: / and the Maker walked the land / with Andraste at His right hand …_ ”

She almost laughed at that before catching herself. “And you seriously believe that this mage can bring about the return of the Maker, with _books?_ Most commoners can’t even read vulgar, let alone care about the intricacies of the faith. With all due respect, auntie, we’ve got more important things to worry about than chasing pious fantasies. With the oxmen harassing our shipping and Tevinter acting up again …”

“That’s quite enough, young lady. As it happens, I agree with Her Perfection in this matter. The Chantry must seize this new opportunity, for the greater glory of the Maker, before some vile heretic gets the chance to spew their dangerous filth in print. It is imperative that Messer Cavalcanti get to Val Royeaux, and you will escort him there.”

Frustrated, Justine looked to the knight-commander for support. He simply shrugged, the traitor. “I don’t deal in eschatology. We templars serve the Chantry, and that means we follow orders and don’t try to argue with them.”

For an instant she tried to imagine those words in Commander d’Arnaud’s mouth, and failed. Her household might be in disorder, if her lashing-out at the elf earlier was any indication, but clearly, her aunt had Commander di Sammarlo well under heel.[5] “It’s a foolish order. There are Andrastians being slaughtered in the north. If the templars don’t protect them, their lives and souls are in mortal danger. Our honour demands …”

“Captain, there is an entire templar host marching on Rivain right now to cast out the heathens. Half the order’s fleet is already patrolling northern seas. I, personally, barely have enough men to garrison the Circle and Castle Alessia because of the war. If you can give me a good reason why you, specifically, are indispensable to our war effort, I’ll consider it. But I’ll not defy a direct command from the Sunburst Throne for the sake of your personal glory and ambition.”

Her throat tight, Justine nodded. Her orders were still sealed, who knew what they contained? “Understood, ser. Have your man report to the _Amalthea’s_ mooring at dawn tomorrow, and we will convey him safely to Val Royeaux.”

Resolutely, Aunt Éselde clapped her hands. “Capital. Now, darling, you really need to try the capon and tell me all about what’s been happening at home …”[6]

 

* * *

[1] We use ‘elvish’ instead of ‘elven’ here as the Common adjective – elves themselves generally use ‘elven’, which is more closely cognate to the original _elvhen_ and will later become standard Common

[2] Here, the day is divided into 12 hours from dawn to dusk, and the night in another twelve. This means that an hour’s length varies wildly depending on the time of year and a location’s latitude. The alternative style here presented, based on one in use in Italy until the 18 th century, counts 24 hours between sunsets. Again, this depends on the season and location.

[3] At this point, there is no such thing as military ranks. The titles that would later turn into them are more diffuse. A templar or warden commander – invariably a knight, except in the case of mage wardens – is the officer in charge of a commandry of their order. Those might range in size, wealth and importance all the way from the garrison of a major circle to a minor country manor. Naturally, their prestige and actual precedence is proportional to the size of their posting. Any knight, including a commander might at the same time be a captain – an officer in charge of other knights, especially on detached service. In addition to knights (and mages), both major orders also include lay members, called serjeants, who are commanded either by knights or by lieutenants of their own number. Not all lieutenants are subordinate to captains or commanders, but a lieutenant can never command a knight.

[4] Largely a sixteenth-century idea, this marked the beginning of a long transition from punishment as a vendetta-like act of vengeance to restore the lawgiver’s honour to the Enlightenment ideal of reforming and reshaping both convicts and observers.

[5] Renaissance housekeeping guides were preoccupied with the key question of how to maintain order and decorum in the household, in particularly among domestic servants. This was even more important if the head of the household was a person in the public eye. There was a widespread belief that a man’s household reflected a microcosm of the state, so that princes, politicians and ambassadors had to take extra care to be seen to run a tight ship. Similarly, liberality and splendour were prized as the domestic equivalent to the all-important princely virtue of magnificence.

[6] One of the ways in which the Thedas of the games is least alike to its medieval western European model is the provision of food. Even during the relative abundance of the twelfth and  thirteenth centuries, which was followed by a century of near-continuous famine and Black Death epidemics, Medieval Europe was a world of great scarcity. Food, far from being ‘just’ another requirement of the body, was the controlling feature of social, religious, and economic life. This is a common strand in fantasy settings, largely because of how difficult it is to imagine for most Westerners today: not only do they no longer experience regular famines, but whatever scarcities they face are a) small-scale and personal and b) occasioned by the consumer’s poverty, rather than a cataclysmic failure of supply. Medieval and early modern Europeans, meanwhile, deep into the nineteenth century, lived lives in which starvation was an ever-present threat even in years of plenty. Consider, for instance, the abundance of fairy tales which, in some way, centre around food: a never-ending cornucopia of food, or the mythical land of plenty of Cockaigne where “roasted pigs wander about with knives in their backs to make carving easy, where grilled geese fly directly into one's mouth, where cooked fish jump out of the water and land at one's feet.” These fantasies betray the deep uncertainty medieval Europeans felt about their daily sustenance. For more about this, consider Herman Pleij, _Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life_ (New York, 2001). Consider also the religious significance that eating and fasting had. Not for nought does the Lord’s Prayer ask: “give us this day our daily bread”, a petition that medieval theologians parsed as the Bread of Life, i.e. the Body of Christ consumed in the Eucharist. Even as the liturgy came to emphasise the consecration of the host rather than its actual consumption by the communing laity, a widespread, frenzied cult of Corpus Christi emerged that expressed itself in processions, pilgrimages, and excessive fasting. Women in particular frequently attempted to live on water and the Eucharist alone, born from a very real sense that, by _eating_ God, God became part of oneself. For more about this, consider Caroline Bynum, _Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women_ (Berkeley, 1988). From a culinary history perspective, let it also be considered that food and eating were not always about the actual _taste_ of the food: while they are not representative of what people ate on a daily basis, feasts as the characteristic medieval meal “was more an aesthetic and social event than a gastronomic one. The feast was a banquet for all the senses; indeed, food was almost an excuse for indulging senses other than taste. Medieval chroniclers who describe feasts do not give menus, although they lavish attention on the entertainment provided. They describe the appearance of dishes, not the flavor; [sic] the sequence of events, not of courses.” (Bynum, _Holy Feast_ , pp. 60-1).

Thedas, meanwhile, is a land of incredible plenty; one of many instances where the games unthinkingly transpose their creators’ contemporary sensibilities into a medieval-flavoured setting, with corresponding contradictions. One may attempt to justify this by the widespread application of magic (decreasing as time goes on and it is supplanted by more efficient agricultural techniques) in agriculture, The games themselves are of little help, as what food is found in the environment (particularly Skyhold’s miniscule kitchen) is clearly intended more as window-dressing than aught else. Accordingly, the author has elected to portray eating experience in mid-Exalted Age Thedas as generally modern.


	2. Caput ij, in qua nauis Beata Amalthea introducetur & e portu Riuo Alto profiscetur

_Caput ij, in qͣ nauis Beata Amalthea introducetur & e portu Riuo Alto profiscetur_

By the time morning dawned over the sheltered port of Rialto, the day had already begun. Throughout the early hours of the morning, labourers had worked by the light of lanterns to fill the _Blessed Amalthea_ ’s hold with what few purchases Justine had been able to make after her meeting with the grand cleric. While she had been able to make a few bulk purchases and sell off all the wares she had brought with her from Val Royeaux, she’d make a net loss on this journey. By the time her aunt had released her, trading hours at Rialto’s famous markets were already coming to a close. The merchants she had dealt with had seized on her impatience, so that she’d had to settle for less than she’d hoped for selling the Fereldan furs, and in turn bought a few bales of spun, plainly dyed silk. The last bit, another concession to the change of plan that had been imposed on her: while the printed silks of Rivain would have fetched kingly prices in Val Royeaux, Orlesian printers seemed to be entirely incapable of combining their rivals’ work’s lustre and resistance.[1] Most irritatingly, she’d had to pass entirely on all the usual treats and trinkets she brought back from her journeys – her younger sisters, Marguerite, Beatrice and Merise, would be greatly disappointed.  To hear maman tell it, they eagerly awaited Justine’s return whenever she sailed abroad, and no doubt the sweets, toys and trinkets she carried for them had no small part to play in that.

As the sun rose over the bay, then, Justine was up and about, pacing up and down the _Amalthea’_ s deck to oversee last preparations. Still, labourers continued to load cargo: provisions, now; fresh fish, meat and vegetables, organised and paid for by the local templar command. Add to that, barrels of fresh drinking water – the fuel on which all galleys ran – so large and heavy they had to be rolled up the gangway in teams of three. All the while, Justine was in the midst of it, dictating a manifest to the ship’s scribe while coordinating the loading process to make sure her ship was not being dangerously unbalanced.

But in the red gleam of the dawn’s light, she could not help but pause to look over her ship. She was still young, a mere three years since her keel had been laid at the great arsenal of Val Royeaux. Not a scratch marred her deck planks. Still, the pulleys in her rigging gleamed golden in the sun. A smile on her face, Justine looked over the _Amalthea_ ’s deck, aft to bow: a hundred and fifty Royan feet long,[2] with an amidships beam of 12 Royan feet; low, but steady in the water with some three feet of freeboard over five and a half of draught. The aftcastle was shielded from the sun by a canopy of green brocade, embroidered with the arms of the Templar Order and those of the ship’s captain, her own. The canopy had been a donation from her family, both a symbol of their pious devotion and a gift on the occasion of Justine’s first command, and it had served her well during long summer days on the open sea. Three tall and slender masts held on their yards triangular sails so large they required a dozen well-trained men to handle, and behind that, long, swallow-tailed gonfalons of crimson silk sporting the flaming sword of the order.

Before the aftcastle, rows of slanted benches stretched; for now, they were empty as the rowers were occupied with loading supplies. Built for short spurts of great speed in battle, the _Amalthea_ featured an unusual 81 oars on each side, manned by 27 pairs of benches of three rowers each – she’d heard it called _alla sensile_ , in the Antivan, to distinguish it from the new fashionable style of having multiple unskilled oarsmen share a single large oar.[3] Personally, Justine had never understood the point of that. Relying on unskilled hands or even – as one said about Tevinter and the Qunari – convicts and slaves might be alright for a galley owned by stingy merchants who cared not if their wares arrived in a timely and safe fashion, but it would not do for the Maker’s own armada. None of her rowers were templars, of course, but many wore the brown tunic of a serjeant of the order. All but the youngest among them had served under arms, whether in the templar fleet or on Antivan or Orlesian vessels. These were men and women who could be relied on, in battle, to not only maintain their cool but reach for their weapons to defend their ship.

“Everything in order, captain?”

Drawn from her moment of proud admiration, Justine looked up. Her sailing master, Curtis Darmond, had crept up on her while she was distracted. Despite the early hour, he held himself straight, as always, and his short blonde beard was impeccably trimmed. “Good morning to you, too, Darmond.” She had to admit, sometimes she envied the Marcher’s ability to go from deep asleep to being ready to meet the emperor within moments. Or, rather, to wear anything he wished with a poise and _sprezzatura_ that made everyone around him feel misshapen and shabby. The way he stood beside her now, in a half-open leather doublet weathered by the spray of saltwater, cream-coloured hosen, tall boots and a blue codpiece, one hand resting on a silvered pommel, he looked more like a young prince of fortune than a nameless Marcher knight. She couldn’t help but start fiddling with the hem of her doublet. Right. Okay. Moving on. “Do you … are we ready to depart, once we’ve taken aboard the rest of our provisions?”

“Aye, captain. Weather is good and the men are rested. We should make good time and reach Llomerryn in four days. From there ...”

“Hang on. Llomerryn? Oh, bugger, I didn’t tell you, did I? There’s been a change of plans. We’ve new orders from Val Royeaux.”

“Oh? Interesting. Were you planning on telling me about this?”

With a sigh, she leaned on the railing of the aftcastle. “Look, the grand cleric only told me at dinner yesterday. And then I spent all afternoon at the markets trying to divest our cargo before trading ended. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you. Next time, I’ll be sure to find you at whatever tavern you’re chatting up the local girls to bring you the news. Good enough for you?”

That made Darmond laugh, in that peculiarly stifled way of his. “Alright, alright. So, what’s our new course?”

“That’s the thing. We’re to take aboard a passenger and ship him back to Val Royeaux. Don’t even ask how this is supposed to be more important than the war, I have no idea.”

“Huh. We a ferry now? Shall I tell Morgan’s marines they’ve got the wrong ship?”

She laughed. That would make for some conversation. “Please don’t. They’re insufferable enough without thinking they no longer have military rules to abide by. Anyway, I wasn’t exactly given much of a choice. Apparently, our new orders came right from the Sunburst Throne – over the knight-admiral’s head.”

Darmond raised an eyebrow. “That’s unusual. Who’s this passenger?”

“Some mage from the Circle here. A printer and scholar, apparently. I understand the Divine’s got some kooky plan to flood the world with printed Chants to bring about the return of the Maker.”

“Like the Chanters, you mean? _Speak only the Word; sing only the Chant_ and all that? She thinks books can do that?” He paused. “Mind you, it makes sense now that I say it out loud. I mean, most people still read the Chant out loud even if they’d read less holy texts silently. If everyone had a Chant …”

He trailed off, and Justine scoffed. “Don’t you turn all scholarly on me. You ask me, it’s all metaphorical anyway. There’s no way just singing the Chant is enough to bring back the Maker.” Irritated, she looked up the length of the ship. “Where is that mage, anyway? He was supposed to report here at dawn.”

“Might’ve been delayed. It’s almost a two hours’ ride from the Circle.”

“He’s had all night, and most of last afternoon. We have a tide to catch.”

Frowning, Darmond leant against the supports of the aftcastle canopy. “Are you suggesting we set sail without our passenger?”

“If need be.” Pondering, she drummed a quick beat on the wooden railing. Then, she abruptly pushed herself off. “I shall go below, see to the men. Help Berenice with the manifest and send for me if the mage arrives, please.”

“Will do. See you later, captain.”

In truth, she had no intention of inspecting the rowers in their dark and perpetually rank part of the ship, and made a beeline for her cabin. She was aware, of course, that on some of the great galleys in the imperial navy or the fleets of Antivan merchant lords, each officer had their own cabin. On the _Amalthea_ however, with her full complement of 162 rowers, a dozen crossbowmen, twenty-two marines and six officers, space was at a premium, and only the captain and master had cabins of their own. The ship scribe, chaplain and captains of artillery and marines shared the third, while the crew slept on deck or on their benches. Nor did Justine host a proper wardroom, and in fair weather the officers took their meals on the poop deck. Those cabins that did exist were plain to say the least.

Her cabin did, however, have a door that could be locked, a narrow writing table, and a strongbox over the bunk. It was the latter to which she now directed her attentions. She wasn’t entirely sure how a mage scholar compared to a templar captain and daughter of a comte, but as hostess she would be remiss not to offer a gentleman passenger her cabin, much as it may rank her. If so, she mustn’t leave anything behind.

At least, that was what she told herself in justification as she opened the strongbox. There was very little inside: sailing charts, her long-neglected logbook, some jewels that could be turned into cash in a slump. A small, richly carved chest, itself secured by a heavy padlock. Most importantly, the sealed letter Admiral Monseigneur d’Allereux had handed her prior to their departure from Val Royeaux. Carefully, she brushed her fingertips across the deep crimson seal. In relief, she could make out the flaming sword of the order, proof that the letter had been closed in the order’s grand chancellery.

It would be a simple matter to break it, have a look inside, and reseal it with a smudge to render the design of the seal unrecognisable. Or rather, as no one else had access to the letter regardless, simply pretend to Darmond and the others that she had yet to open it. In truth, her heart was burning with curiosity. And besides – what if the orders contained within were so urgent as to brook no delay? The Divine and the knight-admiral were both far, far away in Val Royeaux, had no idea what was truly going on up here on the seas; they could not possibly discern what the situation in situ required of her. _She_ was the supreme authority and sole arbiter under the Maker of right and wrong aboard her _Amalthea_. She would be well within her rights –

Someone knocked on her door, and she froze. “Captain,” – Sister Lydia, the chaplain’s, voice – “Master Darmond sends for you. He says our passenger has arrived.”

Quickly, Justine shoved the letter back inside the strongbox and locked it. She’d take care of that later. “Thanks, I’ll be on deck right away.”

Straightening out her doublet and righting her sword belt, she locked her cabin and ascended the narrow stairs to the deck, Sister Lydia trailing behind her. Darmond, the ship’s scribe Ser Berenice d’Onterre de la Roche, and master of artillery Ser Dankrad Markenbach plus a number of gawking oarsmen and marines had all assembled by the gangway. There appeared to be some sort of commotion, and she quickly moved to join them. “What’s going on here?”

“Look for yourself, captain,” Markenbach said and made way for her to step forward.

Someone idiot must have made a delivery to the wrong ship, she briefly thought, for that was the only way to explain the mess at the foot of the gangway. At a glance she counted no less than five large traveller’s chests, haphazardly dropped on the quay. A gaggle of bored-looking robed elves were lounging around them. Darmond, however, was involved in a heated debate with a tall and lanky man in blue robes lined with sable and inscribed with runes. His bony, somewhat haggard face and receding dark hair made him seem older than he must have been, but his grey eyes gleamed in the sunlight. “Messer Marsilio Cavalcanti, I presume?” she asked, stepping beside Darmond.

“Indeed, yes, that is correct.” The mage spoke rapid if slightly stilted Common; like he was worried the day might be over before he had said all he wished to say. “You must be the captain of this vessel, yes? I am not too early, am I?”

She raised an eyebrow. _Mages._ “You’re late, actually. You were told to report to the _Amalthea_ at dawn, I believe. I am Ser Justine Celeste Genevieve La Tour de Montsalvat, and I am captain of this ship. That means, my word is holy writ for the duration of our journey. Is that clear?”

For a moment the mage seemed to be torn between indignation and submission, before choosing the latter. Smart. Shoulders slumped, he quickly said: “Of – of course, captain. Now if you could kindly tell your man to let me get my things on your ship …” He gestured behind him.

Again, Justine looked over the trunks, and the elves. “No,” she flatly stated. “Not going to happen.”

“But captain, those are essential –”

“I decide what’s essential. If my officers can manage with one trunk each, then so will you.”

Darmond nodded. “Space is at a premium at sea, Messer,” he pointed out, striking a conciliatory note. “What the hell is in those trunks, anyway?”

“Just the absolute necessities of life, as I said. A few changes of clothes, toiletries, a small travel library, some samples of my work to present in Val Royeaux …”

“Hang on,” Darmond interrupted, leaning forward. “Did you just say a _library_?”

“A very small one, I should add! I even had to leave behind my annotated copy of Gallian’s _De Rebus feliorum canorumque –_ Maker knows what I shall do without it, I shall be the laughing stock of all Orlais! The rest, it is humanly impossible to go without. Surely, captain, you would not deprive a man of his copy of Rossi’s _History of the Selenine People_ , or, dare I say it, his edition of the works of Maecron or the great Valia?”

“I have no idea who these people are, so yes, I would. I will grant you exactly one of those trunks. I recommend you pick one with more robes than books. Now be quick about it, we have to leave the harbour with the tide if we don’t want to be stuck here all morning.”

The reply was instantaneous. “Three.”

Justine glanced at Darmond, who shrugged. “Two, and not one more. Now …” She trailed off. A grin had appeared on the mage’s bony face. Oh, damn it, she’d fallen right into his trap. Recovering, she continued: “Get your things aboard. Ser Berenice will show you where to put them.”

At a gesture of his hands, the elves moved to lift up two of the trunks using magic. Suddenly feeling queasy, Justine frowned, raised her hands. “Whoa there, hold on a second. I run a decent ship, Messer. I’ll not have elves set foot aboard my _Amalthea._ My men will bring your luggage aboard. See to it, Dankrad.” She turned back to the mage Cavalcanti, beckoned for him to come up the gangway. “That’s settled then. Welcome aboard the _Blessed Amalthea,_ master mage. Please refrain from casting any spells while aboard lest you scare the oarsmen; other than that, you have free run of the ship. My cabin is at your disposal, and I would be honoured if you were to join us at the captain’s table for your meals.”

Grinning, the mage shook her hand. “Oh, gladly! Some learned company will make this dreary voyage so much more bearable.”

“You don’t sound particularly thrilled at the opportunity. I understand the Divine herself has requested your presence. Regardless, you’ll be going to Val Royeaux, the jewel in the crown of the Maker’s earthly empire and the greatest city of the world. You’d think you’d be a bit more excited.”

He laughed at that, loud and ringing. “I’ve heard the same line about half a dozen other cities, you know! You must be a Royan, captain?”

“Close, but not quite. My family’s estates are a short distance from the city. I was stationed at the White Spire for a couple of years, though.”

“Oh? Would you happen to know a mage named Fedolaire? We’ve been corresponding for some time, and I’ve always felt there was something off about him …”

Stiffening slightly, Justine gave a slight cough. She knew no one by that name, and was the gladder for it: Fedolaire was a common elvish name in Orlais. Unsure how to broach the news that he had been corresponding with a rabbit fraudster to the enchanter, she changed the topic. “Afraid not, Messer. So, why no enthusiasm?”

Cavalcanti fidgeted a little, blushed – it did him no credit; made him look closer to a red pepper[4] than a scholar and mage. “The truth is; I am not very accustomed to travel. Don’t like it, in fact – the farthest I ever go from home is my yearly visit to my second press in Antiva.[5] Travel just brings with it inconvenience, hardship and danger, and in the end you’re stuck somewhere in a strange land full of strangers. And you can’t even take your library with you. Oh, and fair warning: I get seasick easily. I’ll, er, stick close to the railing.”

She made a face. Nothing new, that – surprisingly many of the new recruits she took on as oarsmen had the same affliction. Some never grew out of it. “Next time, try focusing on the horizon when you feel yourself weakening,” she suggested. “I hear that helps.”

“I’ll bear it in mind. Now, I think I’d best get settled in. When are we due to set sail?”

Justine smirked at him. “An hour ago.”

In the end, they only just managed to catch the low tide out of the harbour. Justine kept a close eye on Darmond as he steered the _Amalthea_ through the notorious shoals and flats that were both the defence and the bane of Rialto’s harbour. The canals the Rialtese had carved into the lagoon to allow unobstructed shipping were clearly demarcated by colourful wooden buoys, but even the most experienced sailing master could miss something. She didn’t like to overly strain her oarsmen when there was no need, and they had good, easterly winds, so she had them set all three of the _Amalthea’s_ huge lateen sails.

“I’ve charted a course back to Val Royeaux,” Darmond conversationally said, looking very dashing leaned against the tiller the tiller. She joined him on the helmsman’s platform extending aft from the canopied poop deck. “We’re good on water right now, so if the weather holds our next port of call will be Wycome in four days’ time, followed by Castle Ormskirk, Kirkwall, and Cumberland.  And plenty of small towns in between where we can take shelter for the night, if not resupply.”

“We called at Ormskirk on the way here,” Justine pointed out. “The commander there told me they were preparing to host and resupply the Nevarran fleet on its way north. They may not have the capacity to deal with us, as well.”

“Fair point. I suppose we could sail via Highever and Jader instead …”

Justine grinned. She knew exactly why Darmond was avoiding the obvious route back. “Oh, don’t go out of your way on _my_ behalf. I wouldn’t rob you of this chance to see your family. Why, your heart must be bursting for longing … We’ll call at Ostwick.”

The master grimaced, although the lopsided smirk did not fall from his lips. “How fortunate I am to serve under a captain so concerned about my health. Alack and alas, someone shall have to make sure our guest doesn’t fall overboard when he’s being sick over the railing. I volunteer.”

“What grand tales you’ll have to tell your mother. No doubt she’ll be burning with admiration when you tell her how you valiantly babysat a mage while your brothers and sisters fought and died for the faith up in the savage north.”

Only now did the smirk disappear. “This is really bothering you, captain, isn’t it? That we’re going to Val Royeaux instead of the war.”

She hesitated before answering. Truth be told, she wouldn’t have tolerated such familiarity from any other officer under her command. After having served together for almost six years, however, Darmond was like the brother she’d never had. Which, she supposed, in no way made him less impertinent. She cast a surreptitious look around, then leant against the aft castle’s railing to face him. “I’m twenty-six, Curtis; I’ve been an officer for eight years and a knight for ten. Yet in all those years I’ve never once had the chance to distinguish myself in battle, or anything larger than skirmishes with pirates. To win some laurels of my own, take a prize or three. You and me, we were simply born too late to win glory in the Blight. I can’t even look my cousins in the eye because at least _they_ got to fight in the war against Nevarra. And now, that there’s a finally a war we templars are actually allowed to fight in … I’m being recalled back to the capital? It’s just not fair.”

Darmond chuckled. “The war won’t be over anytime soon, you know. You’ll get your chance soon enough.”

“And what if I don’t? I don’t want to spend the rest of my days commanding some backwater Circle. I need to serve in the capital. Knight-admiral, maybe. Knight-vigilant, even, if I play my cards well. But for that, I need to make a name for myself first.”

“Pfft. Love to have your problems. Not all of us have princes of the blood and peers of the empire for parents. I’ll be lucky if I make it to captain before some abomination kills me.”

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine.”

“Just saying it the way it is, captain. My mother’s a poor town knight, or used to be until she sold her estates, horses and armour to pay the order to take me on as a squire. You need to be someone to rise to the top in the order.”

She grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe in five, ten years you’ll have a powerful friend or two in Val Royeaux.”

“Who can tell. We’re clear of the shoals; shall I have the men start rowing, keep them in shape?”

The grin slid from her face. “Make it so. Don’t want them to get too bored, after all. And have the boys share out water generously, it’s a hot day.” She turned and looked down her ship. To their starboard side, the coastal villages outside Rialto slowly moved past. “Have you seen Morgan at all today? Maker, hope we didn’t leave him behind.”

Darmond laughed. “Don’t worry, he’s under deck, sleeping off his hangover. Might try to wake him.”

She made a face. “I think I’d rather wait until he comes to his senses. If I wake him now, he’s like as not to assume we’re under attack.” Leaning back against the railing, she rolled her shoulders and let the bright morning sun warm her weathered face. No, they wouldn’t face combat on this tour, except at most some pirates. That much was certain. She’d return home without a single prize to her name. No doubt maman would tut-tut and make an oblique comparison or two with her older sisters, all of whom were making waves at court or in the clergy, or her own younger self. _When I was your age, I had already liberated three cities from the ‘spawn …_ Even if they made good time and returned immediately, they wouldn’t join up with the rest of the fleet until the bulk of the year’s campaigning season was done. And then, it’d be wintering somewhere far in the barbaric north, listening to the other ship captains’ tales of glory …

She sighed and closed her eyes. At the very least, she could make the best of this fruitless trip.

“I don’t much like the sight of that cloud,” Darmond said. “Might be we’re sailing right into a bit of a storm.”

Oh, bugger.

 

* * *

[1] The holy grail of dyeing through much of the early modern period was printing washable patterns and designs on textile. European dyes tended to liquefy, a great complication in an age when clothes were washed more frequently than today. From the sixteenth century, this led to a booming trade in Indian textiles, particularly Gujarati calicoes. Mercantilist policies led to efforts to learn, adapt and imitate the Indian printing techniques, and by the end of the 18th century European imports of printed textiles had largely stopped and, indeed, become exports back to India.

[2] The _Amalthea’s_ construction and measures are based roughly on the Byzantine-influenced standard galleys of Charles I of Anjou, dated 1273-4, but somewhat longer and slightly wider and taller accounting to the later period. The measurements are taken from Table 7/1 of Robert Gardiner (ed.), _The Age of the Galley. Mediterranean Oared Vessels since Pre-Classical Times_ (London, 1995), pp. 110-1, the only book this author actually bothered to read for this fic. The Royan foot represents the French pre-revolutionary _pied du Roi_ here. roughly equalling 32.48cm (with 10,000 feet making an _ancient league_ or _lieue ancienne_ and 12,000 making a _lieue de Paris_ ). Non-metric systems are odd and insensible.

[3] Until the 15th century, _alla sensile_ rowing was standard on Mediterranean galleys, after which it was largely supplanted by _alla scaloccio_ rowing. When rowing _alla sensile_ , up to three men share a bench, each with their own oar (this distinguishes later galleys from antique triremes, which featured three banks of rowers on different levels). While vessels rowed in such a style achieved higher speeds and were less vulnerable to the death or incapacitation of any single oarsman – for in _alla scaloccio_ rowing, his two partners cannot operate the shared oar on their own, rendering the entire bench useless – it also required more training and discipline than the alternative. When rowing _alla sensile_ , the innermost rower has the most freedom of movement: he begins his circle of movement leaning back with both feet on the floorboard before the bench, and at his forwardmost point has one foot resting on the bench in front of him, with his arms and the oar outstretched considerably farther. The middle rower’s oar describes a smaller arc, and though this oarsman also steps on the bench before him, he does so with a straight back and outstretched arms, before falling backwards to sit down on his own bench. Finally, the outer rower’s arc is smaller still, and considerably less comfortable, for his two partners’ oars restrict his movement such that he does not lean farther than the footboard and spends much of his time seated. All three positions demand great physical exertion and near-perfectly regular movement to avoid entangling oars, and it is no wonder that navies staffed with convicts and slaves preferred to have all oarsmen on a bench share a single oar.

[4] In real life, _Capsicuum annuum_ is a New World crop. Game canon, detestable though it may be, appears to show (amongst others) potatoes, maize, and squashes in various places throughout Orlais, so we may assume they are native to Thedas and / or Qunari territories. One may then wonder how a Columbian Exchange equivalent would unfold between Thedas and a theoretical New World – not necessarily so much for its ecological and nutritional consequences, but for its profound impact on mentalities and cosmology.

[5] i.e. Antiva City


	3. Caput iij, in qua Iustinia praefecta nauis magum doctissimum hospitante irritior fiet

_Caput iij, in qͣ Iustinia p̄fecta nauis magum doctissīum hospitāte irritior fiet_

The storm did not, in the final consequence, materialise. Indeed, the weather remained quite favourable throughout the day, so that around the eleventh hour she bade the boys set a table on the poop deck. This was her habit: Justine had always lamented how her brothers and sisters in Andraste serving at the Circles hardly knew one another on account of their great number, and much preferred the relative intimacy of smaller postings where an officer might know each of their subordinates by name. The captain of the first ship she had served on had shared her views, and it was from him that she took her custom of hosting a wardroom for her knights and gentlemen whenever practicality permitted.[1]

Once the table was set, she had one of her boys send for her officers, and quickly they all presented themselves on the poop deck. Ser Curtis Darmond, sailing master, was already by her side; which left Sister Lydia, chaplain, Ser Berenice d’Onterre de la Roche, clerk, the titanic master at arms, Ser Morgan Bruich of Dumhythe, and Ser Dankrad Markenbach, the master of artillery. And, of course, the honourable and learned Messer Marsilio Cavalcanti, mage. Justine sat at the head of the table, facing towards the prow of the ship, in a simple curule chair in the shadow of the canopy. “Be seated, sers. Messer Cavalcanti, the place of honour is yours.”

A smile flew over the mage’s haggard face. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a glassy, unsteady smile she took to be a mark of queasiness. As the others sat down, she noted his hands: long and spindly, with far too many wrinkles for a man his age, adorned with a large silver sigil ring and positively covered in inkblots. He must have spent much of the day writing below-decks. Judging by the spots, he was still getting used to the ship’s movement. “You will forgive me if I don’t eat much,” he murmured, staring past her.

“I understand, but you should still take some sustenance. It will do you good.” She clapped her hands to call for the boys – once more she told herself that she’d have to find out _why_ she thought of them as ship’s boys when they both happened to be young girls – and bade them bring the food and drink. The first day of a voyage was always the most plentiful, and rather than ship’s biscuit, salted meat and beans, the girls brought bowls of fresh fruit, fried chicken and veal, proper bread and pies filled with a rich steak and beans stew they had bought in Rialto this morning. The _Amalthea_ was too small to have an actual kitchen, so all the food was served cold.

The mage absent-mindedly shook his head. “No, no. Farenia writes in _De re medica:_ ‘Si sine vomitu nausea fuit, vel abstinere, vel post cibum vomere.’ And since I’d prefer not to do the latter, I shall abstain. Although …” The smile returned, however faint. “As you know, Stabion Misenon the Elder writes in his _Naturalis Historia_ that ‘nauseas maris arcet in navigationibus potum,’ and the noble Flaccus sings: ‘Capaciores adfer huc, puer, scyphos / et Valar vina aut Dorma / vel, quod fluentem nauseam coerceat, / metire nobis Ventosa …”[2]

Lost entirely, Justine glanced first at Sister Lydia, then at Ser Berenice, both of whom she knew had some learning. Each seemed just as confounded as she was. Ignoring what he had said, Ser Morgan passed Cavalcanti the wine, which seemed to be the right answer. The mage drank very deliberately, with closed eyes. “Goodness, I’m feeling better already. I think I might eat something, after all.”

“Well, by all means. Sister, if you would …”

Sister Lydia nodded, smiling, and lowered her head. Obediently, the other officers followed her lead. “As there are but two kinds of men,” she began, “the good and the wicked, there are two sorts of food: one, for our bodies, that we might strongly wield the sword of justice. The other, the Maker’s boon, succour and comfort to our spirits, that we might never cease to fight the battle for the world. For thus sang the prophet: ‘speak only the word, sing only the Chant: then the Golden City is thine.’ Thus, as we eat tonight what the Maker’s grace has allowed us to harvest, let us also strengthen ourselves with faith.”

Justine gave her a slight nod. Normally, the chaplain’s grace was scarcely more than a line or two. Lydia was clearly showing off for their learned guest, who however was still fixated on his cup. Morgan was even less appreciative, and had his hands on a platter of veal the instant Lydia finished. Justine glared at him, the boor, before returning her attentions to Cavalcanti. “I hope you’ve found our ship to your liking so far,” she conversationally began. “I realise your illness will have put a damper on the whole experience, but even so.”

The mage nodded without looking up at her. She offered him one of those small loaves of oiled wheat bread the Rialtese made, but to his great misfortune the mage waved them away. More for the rest of them, she supposed. “Experience? Yes, yes, it certainly has been an experience. I did not realise it would be so – how shall I put it – cramped? Tell me, captain, is that usual on ships?”

“The _Amalthea_ is built for combat more than cargo,” she pointed out. “What, specifically, do you have in mind? If this is about your quarters …”

“Oh, no, captain, none of that. Why, your cabin is larger than my first cell at the Circle was, when I was just starting out. Just a bed, a desk and a wash basin, and a servant I had to share with five other junior mages. Although I did not bump my head nearly so often on the ceiling back then. No, captain, I was thinking of your sailors – or is it rowers? There do not seem to be sufficient accommodations for them downstairs.”

Justine shrugged. “Only the officers have cabins below decks. The oarsmen sleep on their benches, as well as work and eat.”

“But there are three people on each bench! You’d have to be stacking them on top of one another to fit them!”

By her side, Darmond chuckled. “Not so far off the mark, Messer. One rower sleeps on top of the bench, another in the foot space between benches, and the third leant against the bench and the footrest. It’s not what anyone would term comfortable, of course. It’s part of why we’d ideally want to call at port every night.”

For the first time, Cavalcanti looked up from his cup. “But doesn’t that unnecessarily delay our voyage? Surely we’d arrive in Val Royeaux sooner if we sailed throughout the night.”

“I don’t know any captain who’d do that, at least not voluntarily,” Justine pointed out. “Quite apart from the crew’s need for sleep and fresh water, sailing even on the clearest full moon night would leave us imperilled by shoals, riffs and shallows, let alone enemy vessels. There are ships that can be sailed by night, but those are ocean-going cogs and carracks, not oared warships.”

The mage frowned. “Alright, but what about tonight, then? It’s already quite dark.”

“There are many harbours lining these seas, both natural and man-made.” Darmond looked over the shoreline to starboard with a critical eye. In the evening twilight, the vineyards and olive groves gleamed as though on fire. “At our current speed, I reckon we should reach Porto Corvino within the hour. It’s a small town, but there used to be a templar commandry there before the Blight. The Grey Wardens took it from us in 5:20, but the town is still more than happy to take our tolls for the use of their port.”

Justine shuddered slightly at the mention of the Grey Wardens. Even today, twenty years after the defeat of the last Blight at Ayesleigh, the wardens continued to cling to their ill-gotten holdings and privileges. So many crimes had been committed in those days, so many atrocities, and so many had gone unchallenged. Her own aunt, then widely known as one of the Empire’s finest generals, had died by a warden’s executioner’s sword when she refused to sacrifice a now-forgotten town near Markham for a strategically more significant, but barely populated nearby castle. No, the wardens had benefited from that war, the only ones to do so. Not for the first time, Justine swore to herself that, once she finally became one of the order’s grand officers, she would work towards recovering those castles, manors and estates illegally seized by the wardens for the one true faith and its knights.

The mage Cavalcanti, however, did not share her antipathy. “A noble and honourable order,” he commented, oblivious to the mood around the table turning against him. “Their sacrifices certainly merit much. Tell me, though, Ser Dankrad: is it true what I have read, that the wardens have established a gapless system of policing in your homeland, which not only protects the people from the Darkspawn, but also from crime?”

Dankrad had to look around first to make sure it was he who was being addressed. Then, he shrugged. “I vouldn’t know, Messer,” he carefully pronounced. Even so, a bit of his sharp Anders accent slipped through. Ser Dankrad Markenbach was a relative newcomer to her wardroom, having only joined her crew nine months ago. That said, she knew him well enough to know that his accent rankled Dankrad’s inner perfectionist. “I have not been back zere in many years,”

The mage didn’t mind. “I correspond – a little – with a friend and colleague at the Circle of Hossberg,” he explained. “The way she explained it, the wardens set up watch stations at regular intervals throughout the kingdom. At the first sight of darkspawn, they’d alert the next watch post via courier, magic or raven, who would in turn carry the message to the next watch post and so on  until it reached the regional warden commandry. They send out troops to suppress the darkspawn, and in turn report to Weisshaupt Castle.”

“Alright, so it’s a fairly tight system. What does that have to do with crime?”

The mage’s eyes lit up. “Ah, you see, the system meant that every Anders village had a warden watch post, and every town had a commandry. Their lords, meanwhile, let alone the king’s justices, weren’t nearly so present. Naturally, the people started turning to the wardens for protection and to arbitrate their disputes, and the wardens applied the same efficiency to governing as they did to fighting the Blight. Today, every household head reports to the street leader, who reports to the parish eldest, who reports directly to the wardens in the villages, or to the mayor in the towns. Thus, every man, woman, child and elf has a supervisor to  account for them at all times, and alert authorities to their crimes and misbehaviours.”

Ser Berenice, peeling an orange, leant back in her chair. “It’s an interesting idea,” she conceded. “I can see how people would be turned off their vices by supervision. Law and order in the countryside shouldn’t be left to the Chantry alone. Maker knows most priestesses wouldn’t know sin if it stared them in the … uh, meaning no offense, Lydia.”

The sister smirked. “I’m thinking I might have to punish you for that later, Ren …”

Berenice giggled and leaned closer to Sister Lydia to whisper something in her ear, and there was a round of general awkwardness. Some coughing, averted eyes. As usual when this happened, Justine didn’t quite know where to look. It wasn’t that she begrudged them their diversions. She certainly had no desire to drive them apart, no matter how much she might disapprove – quite the opposite. But the fact remained that both of them had taken holy vows of chastity. Justine had long stopped being surprised by the fact that not every templar or cleric took that particular oath as seriously as she did, but that did not render it defunct. She was able to tolerate illicit affairs among her subordinates if they were discreet about them, but beyond a certain point deliberate ignorance wasn’t going to cut it. If Lydia and Berenice kept at it – particularly in front of their guest – she would be forced to discipline them.

For now, however, she was saved from embarrassment as the two officers excused themselves and hurried below. Luckily, the mage Cavalcanti showed no sign of surprise. “An interesting idea, maybe,” she conceded, returning her attention to his argument. “but in the end, all it means is a warden kingdom. Dankrad, your king must be either enfeebled or an idiot to allow this to happen,” – the Anders knight chuckled – “and they’d never get this far in the Empire. The wardens have already brought enough devastation and death to Orlais without establishing some band of rats and cutthroats as the rulers and seigneurs of the land.”

Cavalcanti raised an eyebrow. “The wardens saved us all from the Blight. They’re heroes, aren’t they?”

She snorted. “Heroes don’t burn down villages. Heroes don’t murder kings and grand clerics. They certainly don’t execute innocent people for daring to stand up to them. Besides, the Blight would have been over before it began if the wardens simply shared their secrets with the rest of the world. The only reason they insist to be the ones to slay the Archdemons is to maintain their power over us.”

Darmond gave a slight cough. “Let’s get this back on track, shall we?”

“It’s not just the wardens, though,” Cavalcanti eagerly continued, ignoring the sailing master’s suggestion. “Imagine how much good these techniques would do if we adapted them.”

“We?”

Dismissively, Cavalcanti waved his hand. “Antiva, the Circles, templars, whoever. Do you know what the greatest threat to the Circles is, these days?”

“A shortage in the silk industry?” Morgan drawled to general amusement. “Or a bad wine year?”

Piqued, the mage ignored the comment. “It is indolence. After all, it is well-known that idleness leads to moral degeneration, societal disruption, and indeed crime. Our young mages no longer spend their _otium_ on worthwhile, dignified pursuits befitting of a gentleman mage, like, like scholarship or healing or the advancement of magic. No, they prefer to waste away their time with frivolous diversions. They get drunk even early in the morning, they fool around with elves, they disrupt their seniors’ work with malicious hexes and pranks – and when they are finally old enough to apply for leave from the Circle, they invariably do so, and spend all the rest of their lives as libertines and degenerates in the cities. No, captain, we need to eliminate idleness and separate ourselves from the world like nuns, as it was in the time of the Ancients, so we can restore dignity and true scholarly wisdom to the Circles.”

“I don’t see how this relates to the wardens’ rule of the Anderfels.”

“Well, what we really need is tighter oversight. Obviously the Circle can’t do that itself, it is corrupt all the way to the top these days. You templars should oblige mages to live within the Circle grounds, and grant exceptions only to senior enchanters of proven moral character. Meanwhile, a stronger templar presence in the Circles would strengthen discipline. We can learn from your order’s example, good sers. You templars, you are more monks than soldiers, truly. You divide your time between prayer and honing your bodies, as it should be, and don’t fall prey to the elfishness and corruption of courtly follies and other sapping diversions to which so many lay knights succumb these days. You honour the Maker and obey your superiors, and govern your manors and lands with such justice and prudence that they are some of the richest and happiest in the world. All of that – those are qualities the Circles desperately need. Most importantly, however, we need a clearer hierarchy to make sure Maleficars are not only kept from doing harm, but their errors prevented from ever arising from excess idleness. Discipline and punishment have to go hand in hand, nothing may be concealed from their peers and superiors, nothing at all.”

Justine chuckled. The very idea … “Is that what you’re going to tell the Divine when you meet her?” She put down the half-eaten pie in her hand. “In other words, you want us to police you because you can’t do it yourself? I remind you that the purpose of our order is to fight evil magics, not drunken apprentices. Besides, you seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the order has nothing else to do but guard Circles. I’ll have you know that only very few of us spend more than a few months there. We may be allies, but we’re not wedded to each other.”

Leaning back, Darmond put aside his napkin. “Now, now, captain, don’t be so harsh. You must admit, Messer Cavalcanti is making sense. If you ask me, it’s high time for the order to start focusing on cleaning up corruption and decadence in the Circles; return to our original mission, so to speak. A friend in Kirkwall told me that every year since the Blight, near twice as many new mages have been admitted to the Circle as in all the years before it. The Circles are filled to bursting, and our garrisons cannot keep pace as long as we keep wasting our strength on petty skirmishes.”

“It’s true,” Cavalcanti concurred. “I shan’t bore you with the details, but as I understand it, the Veil was so weakened by the Blight that many more infants were touched by the Fade _in utero_. Fact is, we need your order to return its attention to us, and I shall be proud to say as much to Her Perfection.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I _thought_ you’d been summoned by the Divine to, what, build printing presses for her? What makes you think you’ll be advising her on such things?”

The mage’s gaunt face turned red. He avoided her eyes, sipped on his wine. “You wound me, captain. It is clear that you are no scholar, so I’ll forgive you your ignorance, but I’ll have you know that I am not only known for my press. I have set and published newly commented editions of all the major classics, from Argric to Vigilius, celebrated throughout the world for their clarity and completeness. At Rialto, I have founded a Dwarfish academy on the model of that of Kogrim the Elder, to bring together all the foremost Dwarfists in Thedas, for the advancement of scholarship and wisdom.  And whilst my own talents pale before those of my colleagues, I myself have produced a not inconsiderable number of volumes on topics both large and small, including a _Historia regum populorumque antivorum, autem includens multa facta clarissima urbium illius regni,_ et quoque libellum _De rebus magicis disputationes tres,_ quid quattuor dies ad ducissam …”[3]

From the mage’s tone, Justine suspected he had lost control of his tongue and hadn’t even realised the language switch. Well, she wasn’t going to sit here and listen to this heathen gibberish at her own table. “Enough,” she cut in, sharply. “You may be renowned in learning, but you are still a guest aboard this ship. As you rightly state, we are no scholars, and no doubt I speak for all of my gentlemen here that we’d appreciate you speaking Common with us.” Realising how this sounded, she moderated her tone. Cavalcanti was making a nuisance out of himself, but so long as he wasn’t actively trying to irritate her she owed him hospitality. Maker, maman would be staring daggers at her were she here now. “No one here doubts your, ah, scholarly accomplishments. I was simply wondering whether … whether you had reason to believe the Most Holy is as learned in these matters as you are. I’ve met the Divine, and she’s always struck me as a particularly _dull_ person. All piety and no magnificence, so to speak. She doesn’t even keep a lover, if you can believe it.”

“Now you’re having us on,” Morgan interjected. “There’s no such thing as a chaste prelate.”

She snorted. “If you’d met her, you’d believe it. The Divine happens to be a foster sister of my aunt’s brother-in-law. I have never met a more witless person in my life. The one time we met, she immediately pulled aside my aunt, the Marquise de Cardeaux, and spent the rest of the evening soliloquising about bookkeeping or something like that.” She paused, and a smirk played around her lips. “That said, who knows? She might be just the sort of person who’d be receptive to your entreaties, Messer mage.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” the mage wryly commented. “But, yes, the captain is right; our present Divine has something of a reputation for austerity. Still, the fact that she summoned me at all suggests there’s a grand vision for the future of all Cantantia hiding somewhere in her chest.

“One where we all spend all our time poring over books like clerks and disputants,” Morgan snorted. “That’s going to put the fear of the Maker into the oxmen, alright.” Without asking to be dismissed, the Fereldan stood up and left the poop deck.

More than slightly irritated, Justine wiped her hands on the tablecloth and pushed back her plate. She’d barely touched her food, but she wasn’t going to bear any more of this idle chatter. “Well, I think we’re done here. Messer Cavalcanti, we should call at Porto Corvino soon, if you wish to make use of the opportunity to stretch your legs. We’ll be sailing on at dawn tomorrow, though, so don’t spend too much time in town. Dankrad, you have the first night’s watch.”

“Aye, captain.”

And she, she told herself, was going to think of some excuses to avoid these suppers until such time as they could get rid of the mage.

* * *

 

[1] While much of the portrayal of the templars’ rule is based on Bernard de Clairvaux’ 1128 _Latin Rule_ for the Knights of the Temple, we diverge regarding the regulations of meals. Like most monastic communities based on the Rules of Augustin and Benedict, templars were to take their meals in silence (although, unlike for regular cloistered orders, knights were permitted to quietly ask for things like condiments or drink with their voice rather than hand signs), listening attentively to a lecture from a religious text. The author has opted for an alternative portrayal largely to move the plot along and use the times when all the knights are gathered in one place for exposition.

[2] Classical Tevene is not, in fact, a perfect Latin analogue (even if, as one may presume, it actually _is_ Latin – though the games seem torn between that and Greek as inspirations). It is not the liturgical language of the Chantry, which aggressively embraces the vernacular, and although it is the ancestor of Tevene languages like Antivan, Rivaini or Orlesian, all of these are even now becoming displaced by Common, an artificial pidgin created by dwarves and deriving from Old Dwarfish, Tevene and its vulgars, and the Alamarri dialects spoken in Andraste’s time. Pushed by the early Chantry and the Andrastian aristocracy imposed over the dissolving Imperium during the Ancient Age, and facilitated by the Blights as linguistic reset buttons, Common during the Exalted Age becomes the language of commerce, the Chantry and travel, and increasingly elite children are brought up with Common as their first language. As for the specific excerpts; Farenia = Celsus, “In case of seasickness without vomiting, one should either fast or vomit after eating.” Stabion Misenon the Elder = Pliny the Elder, “While travelling, drink ends seasickness.” Finally, Flaccus = Horace, “Bring more spacious bowls, lad, and pour the Valarian (Chian) / Dorman (Lesbian), or Ventosan (Caecuban) wine / That’s designed to prevent all seasick qualms.”

[3] Cavalcanti’s unadulterated boasting here would seem to be rather gauche considering some of the principal Renaissance humanists’ feigned humility, but not everyone had that kind of grace and rhetorical cunning. Consider the autobiography of the Mannerist artist Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71), one of the most famous (and certainly the most colourful) autobiography of the Renaissance. In it, Cellini not only openly denigrates his rivals, but also boasts freely with sexual conquests and in one memorably psychopathic passage claims to have killed dozens of men during the siege of Rome, including the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Bourbon.


	4. Caput iiij, quibus epistola admiratae a Iustinia p̄fecta aperitur

_Caput iiij, quibus epistola admiratae a Iustinia p̄fecta aperitur_

 

 

Three further evenings passed like this before, on the fourth, the _Amalthea_ called at the castle of Belventosa in the headlands of the Minanter river. Once, Belventosa had served the lords of this region as the stronghold from which they led their raiding parties up and down the coast, before one of them, in an act of deathbed contrition, willed the castle, its appertaining village and lands, and a dozen further manors across the region to the Templar Order on the provision that his son be granted admission and a knighthood and that a Chant might yearly be sung in his memory in the castle’s chapel on the feast day of the Saint Fulcred of Highever. He had chosen well, for today, one Blight and fifty-eight years later, Belventosa was not only in better shape than it had been at the wicked lord’s death, but had grown still further. The village was on its way to becoming a small town, and the castle itself was also changing every time she was here. Even now, Justine could make out scaffolding around the keep, and stubby black tubes stuck out between the seaward battlements. At once, she recognised what they were: cannons! She had only seen the new weapons once before, at an inspection of the imperial siege park in Val Royeaux two years ago. As a demonstration, they had fired one of the new falconets at a wooden target, and the shot had torn through it like Serault glass. At once, her thoughts had turned to what a weapon like that might do to a ship, and right now she was overwhelmed with relief at the knowledge that the guns of Belventosa would never be aimed at a templar ship.

Under the watchful eyes of the dark silhouettes now and then appearing in between the castle’s crenellations and battlements, and Darmond’s firm hand on the tiller, the _Amalthea_ sailed into the harbour. Two other ships lay beside her, so that they had to carefully manoeuvre under oars into place along one of the three long wooden mooring reaching out into the bay. One of them was a large cog, so deep in the water its owners must have expected a tidy profit from its cargo. Its mast had been lowered, to make repairs, by the looks of it.

The other ship was the _Blessed Marion._

If not for the coat of arms on the poop deck canopy, one might have mistaken the _Marion_ for her sister ship the _Amalthea._ Both had been built at the order’s arsenal in Val Royeaux, scarcely a year apart, and in fact Justine had briefly served aboard her before getting her own command – that was where she’d picked up Darmond. Now, however, the _Marion_ appeared derelict and battered. Its sails were tattered and riddled with blackened holes, and one of the heavy silk gonfalons decorating the yardarms had been rendered unrecognisable by fire. Parts of the railing had been shattered, rendering the rowers’ benches behind them unusable, and the rigging hung limp from the masts. Most concerningly, however, the _Marion_ lay in the water with an odd tilt, as if she was leaking below the waterline.

She openly stared as they moved alongside her, ignoring the murmurs arising from the rowers’ benches. Slowly, as though in trance, she stepped over to Darmond at the tiller, and Ser Berenice looked up from her ledgers to join them. “That’s the _Marion_ ,” Darmond stated, a hollow look in his eyes. “Maker have mercy, what happened to her?”

“Pirates?,” the scribe suggested. “They keep growing bolder with the hour.”

Justine frowned. “If it was a pirate ship, they must have had mages aboard. The enemy didn’t do that sort of damage with just quarrels.” A sudden thought occurred to her. “Maker, I pray Captain Piquet made it out alive.”

“Agreed.” Darmond glanced up at the castle, worry plain in his eye. “If the old Pike’s still with us, he’ll be at the castle,” he pointed out. “If not, it’s where we should present ourselves to the commander, anyway.”

“You two can head up there right away,” Ser Berenice suggested. “No doubt you’re eager to see your old comrades. I can handle things down here, don’t worry.”

Justine gave the scribe a brief look, then nodded. Hastily, she reached for her sword, which she had removed and leaned against her captain’s chair to get it out of the way, and refastened the belt between her doublet and overgown. “Be sure to note it in your log. Oh, and send some of our men over to the _Marion_ to offer assistance.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

“Darmond?”

“Coming.”

The fortress was only a short distance away from the moorings, but the geography required them to take a narrow, serpentine path leading from the village up the cliffs. Several times, Darmond and Justine had to press themselves closely against the cliff to avoid riders coming down from the castle. It must make the supply of the Belventosa difficult, she supposed, but once they arrived at the summit, she could see the benefits of this arrangement. Whereas the seaside walls of the fortress were formidable, the landside walls were scarcely taller than herself, clearly intended more to delineate the borders of the castle than to fend off attackers. Any assault would have to make it up the cliffside path first, after all. The walls were overgrown with vines, blooming bright pink, and her impression would have been of a vineyard or a monastery rather than a fortress of vital importance to the order’s naval operations, if not for the old-fashioned square keep dominating the courtyard.

Arrived at the summit of the cliffs, they took a moment to catch their breaths and look out over the bay. The play of the evening sun on the water, the wood-shingled roofs of the village below them, the languid flutter of the moored ships’ pennants in the breeze … “It’s a lovely view,” Darmond commented beside her. “You know, I could see myself buying land here someday, after I’ve retired. A vineyard, maybe.”

She laughed. “Curtis, you’ve never been away from the cities for more than a month in your life. You’d go stir-crazy within a week.”

“Maybe. But when I do, I’ll have all the Belventosan red I could possibly want to get me through my days. Come, let’s see if the old Pike made it out alive.”

Walking into the courtyard, they were greeted by a familiar sight they could have seen anywhere in Thedas: serjeants in brown, tending to horses, lugging firewood, doing all the work that enabled the order’s continued functioning; in one corner, the knights of the chapter engaged in sword drills. They approached one of the serjeants by the . “We’re looking for the commander.”

“Over there, mistress. In the red cloak.” The serjeant nodded towards in the general direction of the training knights and went back to work.

There weren’t many of them: seven in total, including the one overseeing their exercises. Justine suspected that this number again held land for the order in the vicinity, and were subject to the commandry of Belventosa. Not very large as far as templar castles went, even discounting the great Circles and their garrisons. Most of them were in gambesons, quilted doublets or just shirtsleeves to accommodate their sparring, and the only man wearing the traditional maroon cloak of a knight of the order was the somewhat rotund figure watching over them on the sidelines. She’d not seen this man before, but she’d heard somewhere that Commander FitzHenley had retired last year. He waved them near as they approached. The colour of his face matched his cloak, and bright blue eye sparkled between bushy blonde eyebrows and an equally bushy moustache.

Justine gave a slight bow. “Good evening, brother. My name is Justine Celeste Genevieve La Tour de Montsalvat,” she introduced herself. “I am captain and prefect of the _Blessed Amalthea._ This is my master, Ser Curtis Darmond.”

“Welcome to Belventosa, sers. I’m Sieghard Gurney, I’m the commander here. First, I must warn you that you’ve come at a bad time for us. No doubt you’ve seen the _Marion_ in the harbour, yes?”

“We don’t require any repairs, although we’d like to take on fresh water and spend the night. Speaking of the _Marion_ , is there any way we can assist? We have a carpenter and a full complement of hands on board.”

“I think we have things well in hand, but thank you. I will see to it that you can refill your water supplies at our stores.”

“Thank you. One more thing – the _Marion’s_ captain, Ser Andrastien Piquet. Darmond and I used to serve under him on the _Marion._ Is he here?”

Something between a shadow and a nervous twitch appeared on Commander Gurney’s face. “Oh, he is here. I have to warn you, though, he’s in pretty bad shape – in more ways than one. If you want to see him, though, he promised he’d join us at supper tonight, together with the rest of his knights. You and yours are heartily invited as well, of course.”

She glanced at Darmond, who shrugged. “We should have matters well-settled by then. I see no reason why not.”

Justine grinned and nodded at Gurney. Piquet had been a hard taskmaster back in the day, but he’d also been the mentor who’d taught her to command both men and ships. It would be good to meet him again. “We’d be happy to join you.”

“Splendid. If you like, I can have a serjeant sent down to the harbour to inform your people at once. In the meantime, why don’t you two join us at vespers in our chapel? I know how hard it must be to keep the Hours aboard a ship.”

“Gladly.”

It was true – it had been so long since she’s kept proper Hours that she could not remember. Aboard the _Amalthea_ , the best she could do was mumble the handful of verses the templars’ rule prescribed for detached service, at least when Sister Lydia thought to remind her of it. They took their time, and by the time the last echo of the last syllable of the antiphon had faded away, it was joined by the grumbling of their stomachs. They proceeded directly to the refectory, a large chamber on the first floor of the keep. It was kept very plain, certainly compared to the knights’ hall at the White Spire, but also compared to her own parents’ palais. Rough-hewn wooden benches and tables on a straw floor, a large maroon banner with the order’s flaming sword and a verse from Benedictions 4 above the fireplace. Her own knights, plus Cavalcanti and Sister Lydia, were already present, chatting to the knights of the garrison. Looking around, she did not see Captain Piquet anywhere.

Gurney offered her the place of honour to his right at the high table, leaving the place to his left empty for Piquet. “ _Blessed be this food, it is your Maker’s blessing,_ ” the chaplain sang, then food was served by the serjeants. It was a fast day, so that the large bowl placed jointly in front of the Commander and herself contained no meat, but after several days’ worth of shipboard fare, her mouth was watering at the thought of fresh vegetables.

“You said Piquet would be joining us?,” she asked after a couple of spoonfuls of a dish of fava beans boiled in almond milk, topped generously with cinnamon. Simple fare, except for the last part, and the fact that plates of shellfish, saffron rice, crabs and fresh white bread were also being handed around the tables. Either Gurney was pulling out all the stops, or she had discovered the cause of his rotundity.

“He said as much when I spoke to him earlier today,” the commander reassured her. “Though he was in a fell mood. His knights are here, though.”

“Which are his? I don’t seem to know any of the new crew.”

Gurney raised his voice and waved them over. “Hey, Lefebvre, Halegod, Stockwelle, come over here a second!”

Three knights, sitting together at one end of the left-hand table, rose and stepped in front of them. Not one of them looked happy about it, and not one of them didn’t bear some sort of injury. “I am Valerie Lefebvre,” a dour looking, dark-skinned woman with a nasty young scar on her neck introduced herself. Her fingers twitched on the pommel of her sword. Three fingers, Justine noticed, three fingers and two stumps. “I am sailing master on the _Marion._ Those two are Willem Halegod, master at arms, and Frederick de Stockwelle, clerk.”

“My pleasure,” Justine said, more out of politeness than genuine sensation. There was something unsettling about those three knights, the way two of them seemed to look right past her while the third’s stare was unrelentingly incisive. “I was expecting your captain to be here, though. And the other knights aboard the Marion. I imagine the repairs are keeping them busy?”

Ser Valerie straightened her back. “There are no other knights on the _Marion_ ,” she calmly intoned. “Not anymore. As towards the captain’s whereabouts, I cannot speculate.” Then, the knight quickly glanced at her fellows, before straightening even more until she stood in front of Justine like a taut bow string, or rather like a deer about to bolt from the hunter. “Beg to be excused, ser.”

“O-of course.” Startled though she was, Justine felt anger rising inside her as the three knights hurried back to their benches. _This_ was not how a knight of Our Lady should conduct herself. A couple of injuries – badges of honour, really – were no justification for such … cowardice. Her glance shot over to Gurney, but he was pretending quite studiously to be concentrating on his crabs.

Justine was playing with the thought of presenting her own knights as a counterpoint, to show up the proper virtues exhibited by a knight templar, when the door by the fireplace opened.

She hardly recognised her old captain, Ser Andrastien Piquet, as he walked into the room. They’d used to joke about his rigour and stiffness, expressed so strongly in his bearing – the origin of his nickname, ‘old Pike’. This man – this shambling Fade spirit, rather – approached the high table like a beggar in a red cloak, slouching, his back hunched over and his head between his shoulders. He barely looked at her as he sat down on Gurney’s left.

Confused, she glanced over at Darmond at the right-hand table, who simply shrugged in puzzlement. Then, she rose and stepped behind their old captain and tapped him on the shoulder. “Andrastien,” she said, relishing the chance to call her old taskmaster by his given name rather than his rank or title. “It’s good to see you. Justine Celeste, remember me?”

He all but shrunk away from her before turning around to look up at her from wide eyes. “Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, I remember you. What … what are you doing here?”

“Just taking on supplies. What about you, and the _Marion_ , though? How goes the war?”

“The war …” He looked away. “Going well. Sieghard, will you pass me the wine?”

“Come now, you can do better than that. You’ve had your fair share of battles against the heathens, clearly. Tell us of them, brother; it’ll life our spirits!”

The older knight’s voice quavered as he answered, and Justine noticed that his hand around his goblet was shaking. Age, she told herself, but it sounded hollow. “There’s nothing to tell.”

She gave an incredulous laugh. In truth, she’d never known Piquet to be this humble. But age and experience did change people. But Justine knew that, even if he required encouragement, tales from the war would inspire the knights. Herself, of course, she really wasn’t too keen to listen to others’ glorious deeds when she herself was denied the opportunity. “Come now, brother. Modesty may be a virtue, but it would be a sin to stay silent of your adventures. Grant us a tale from the savage north, where the sun burns down without mercy, where the infamous oxmen preach their godless creed. Still not inspired, brother? Then give us an uplifting account of Andrastian courage, of how you crossed blades with the oxmen in the Maker’s name. No? Come now, at least tell us of the cities of Rivain, where every street is fragrant with spices and magic lights the sky …”

“Stop. Please.”

She broke off. The plea was scarcely more than a whisper, but it cut through the room like a knife. Piquet had put down his goblet and laid his hands flat on the table before him, shaking. “Please. I can’t – I don’t want to talk about it. Please, just … let us just eat in silence, sister.”

What on earth was he talking about? This was not Piquet, not the Captain Piquet she’d known – a bold man and intrepid knight who never let danger get in the way of doing the Maker’s work. A man who’d never hesitate to spin a tale to embolden his brethren. This man? This man was a stranger to her. Coolly, she removed her hand from his shoulder. “Very well. Enjoy your meal, ser.”

She returned to her bench, once more linked eyes with Darmond, who seemed to be at as much of a loss as her. Next to her, Gurney offered the bowl of beans in milk to Piquet before turning back to her. “So,” he began, deliberately chipper, “how’re things in Val Royeaux? I imagine the roses must be …”

“Cinnamon …” Gurney broke off and glanced over his shoulder back at Piquet, who had dropped his spoon with a clatter and was staring at his bowl as though it were deadly poison.

“Something wrong, Andrastien? Is the food not agreeing with you?”

The captain’s head bobbed up as though he had been shaken from a nightmare. Beads of sweat glistened on his pale brow in the flickering light of the fireplace, and his eyes were wide, wide open, fixed on some point on the other end of the hall, or beyond. “N-no. No, it’s quite alright. Thank you, Sieghard, I’d … there’s some things I have to get done before nightfall, so if you’ll excuse me …”

“You’ll miss the reading, brother,” Commander Gurney scolded. “You already didn’t join us for the vespers, you really should take this opportunity …”

“No!” At Piquet’s shout, all the knights’ conversations came to a dead halt, and all eyes turned to him. He had jumped to his feet, and his hands tightly gripped the edge of the table. “No …,” he repeated, at almost a whisper. “I can’t …” His head fell back into his neck, and his eyes were clenched shut. “I can’t,” he repeated. “I close my eyes and suddenly I’m back there. Cinnamon … they put so much cinnamon into it … so we wouldn’t protest. Every day. Rice, with cinnamon and milk and … and their poison …” His eyes fluttered open. They were wet with tears. “How do you fight someone like that? You can’t fight them. Can’t fight the Qun. They have no honour. _I_ have no honour. They just … just kill you. They killed Frances. And – and Howard, and … I can’t remember. I can’t remember my brother’s face. I can’t even remember his name. I only remember that I had his brains all over my face. Or Frances’, I don’t remember. They just kill you, mercifully. If they’re merciful.” Piquet swallowed hard, shook his head. From irritated eyes, tears ran down into his beard. Several knights rose to their feet and left, shooting contemptuous glares. “At the camp, they kept us in cages. Ten people per cage, men, women, elves … except the elves always got out early. We didn’t. Every day, they g-gave us poison, until … oh, Maker …

“Should’ve – I should’ve stayed. I was so happy when I was starting to forget who I was. When they began to call me a… _athlok_. When I was rescued … the others, the ones they’d captured with me. My people. My brethren. They sent them against us, just … running towards us with nothing more than knives. They didn’t even recognise us when we killed them. If I … if I …”

Piquet’s legs gave out under him, and he collapsed. Half seated on the bench, half leaning against it, his head on the table. Choked sobs began to shake him. “I should’ve stayed!” the captain sobbed, “I should have stayed! Maker have mercy, why did they have to rescue me when I should have died! I should’ve forgotten …”

As Piquet’s voice broke into an inarticulate stream of sobs, and sheepish silence was left behind in the hall, Justine sharply rose to her feet. At the sight of the mess in front of her, cold white fury arose within her. This man, this broken man, this … _thing_ , that was no templar. It was not a knight, it wasn’t even a man. It was lower than the lowest of swine.  “Perhaps you should have,” she snapped. “What kind of coward are you? What kind of infidel?” She spat on the straw floor in front of the broken knight. “I’ll not sully myself by supping with you. Commander, I advise you to throw this … this _elf_ out to the dogs.”

She turned to leave the hall, but not before casting one last contemptuous glance down at the broken creature on the floor. “And to think I used to look up to you.”   

Justine made the way down the cliffside past alone, still seething. When she had first set foot on the _Marion_ , six years ago, she had done so in the certain knowledge that she would be serving under, and learning from, one of the most prominent and best-regarded officers in the entire order. She had not been disappointed. Those years had been filled with hard work from dawn to dusk, and more than the occasional bruise or wound, and she and fellow youth Darmond had cursed their taskmaster with great regularity. But by the end of her time aboard the _Marion_ , she’d known that it had been worth it: that she would be a knight and an officer second to none, and a mariner better than most. She _had_ admired Captain Piquet.

But, clearly, she’d been wrong. This display – she had to shake her head at it, there was simply no way for her to comprehend what she had just seen. A display like that wasn’t only beneath a templar, beneath a knight, it was beneath even the fattest, greediest burgher, it was below an elvish vagabond in the streets, it was below the meanest serf and villein. And what was more, Piquet had dishonoured himself in the face of the enemy. Anyone could lose a battle, and anyone could be captured, there was no shame in that. And, of course, everyone in the world knew that the Qunari were savage barbarians who fought more like beasts or even Darkspawn than humans; that they had no honour and no mercy.[1] No honour – but a certain low cunning that even beasts possessed. A knight, an officer, who fell into their claws would not necessarily live in luxury, but could certainly count on being well-treated. After all, every army had to pay its soldiers, even the Qunari, and their nobles and officers would be fools to pass by the opportunity to ransom their prisoners. That, no doubt, was also how Piquet had escaped his captivity. What a waste of a ransom! Even if, by some divine miracle, the man came to his senses, after tonight’s display no knight of any dignity would deign to serve with him.

No, she told herself, what was needed wasn’t weaklings like Piquet. If they were going to win this war, they’d need brave young knights, secure in their faith and eager to fight for Our Lady, young men and women who knew how to combine martial cunning with honest strength and virtue. In a word, young knights like herself. They – she – she was the one who should be up there fighting while old failures like Piquet sat at home drinking themselves onto an early pyre. She was the one who should be up there taking prizes and seizing prisoners for ransom, and she was the one who should be earning honour and glory. She, too, was the one who should return home an Andrastian hero, who should be inducted into the Order of the Golden Mask by the hands of the emperor himself. She, too, who should at last distinguish herself from her sisters and her parents, and take her rightful place as a bright rising star in the Templar Order.

But her orders forbade it.

She was still seething when she arrived at the _Amalthea’s_ mooring. Commander Gurney had, of course, offered her lodgings at the castle, but even if she did not prefer to stay aboard her ship, she would not suffer to share the keep with the creature Piquet. There did not seem to be anything requiring her attention at this time, so she retired to Darmond’s cabin, which she had temporarily claimed for herself while Cavalcanti was on board. As she entered, candle in hand, her gaze fell on the strongbox over the bunk, identical to that in her own cabin. She’d brought some of her own belongings over, both for ready access and to avoid an outsider gaining access to them – some of the portolan charts within were considered to be among the order’s most valuable possessions, papyrus copies of the originals in Val Royeaux which she was under strict orders to destroy if there was even the slightest danger they could fall into enemy hands.

The maps, however, were not what had drawn her eyes. Quickly, almost without thinking, she pulled out the small key she was wearing on a chain around her neck, below her shirt and doublet, unlocked the strongbox, and took out the sealed envelope containing her orders.

She sat hunched on her bunk staring at the envelope in her hands. The virginal seal shone invitingly in the candlelight. So what if she were to open it? It wasn’t as if its contents had been supposed to remain secret to her for all time. But still, her orders were not to open it until they had reached the Northern Passage between Rivain and Par Vollen …

In one rapid movement, she broke the seal.

Wax crumbled to the floor as she unfolded the parchment. It was only a small scrap, as narrow as her palm and only slightly longer, and was covered edge-to-edge with minuscule writing in a rather spikey chancery hand. She leant in closer to make out the letters by the light of the flickering candle. _I, Philippe d’Allereux, knight and admiral of the Order of the Humble Brethren of the Temple of the Ashes, to my sister and servant the Lady Justine de Montsalvat, greetings in Andraste. Whereas all of Cantantia trembles at any news of our knights’ most valiant struggle against the impious Qunari, you are charged, commanded and ordained …_

* * *

 

[1] Considering the earlier attempts to mirror the Mediterranean world, this author feels like they should note in this place that Justine’s thoughts here reflect neither in-universe reality nor the opinions actual Renaissance Europeans held of the Qun’s nearest real-life equivalent; the Islamic world or more precisely the Ottoman Empire. While Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97), the grandfather of Renaissance scholarship, followed the conventional narrative of 19th century Orientalism in considering Islam nothing but a fanatic cult of trivial despotism, and reflected this in his _Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy_ , modern scholarship has emphatically hit back against this idea. Inspired by and challenging both Fernand Braudel’s vision of Mediterranean unity and Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, and spurred on by the methodological development in global history, recent scholarship has placed the Islamic world back near the centre of the Italian Renaissance, emphasised trans-cultural connectivity and permeability, and indeed direct cultural and intellectual influences. Furthermore, despite occasional rhetoric especially from churchmen and Protestants to the contrary, Europeans did not consider the Islamic world to be as utterly alien and hostile as often perceived. Indeed, it would be more appropriate to consider that, just as Sultans like Mehmed II or Suleiman the Magnificent outdid many Italian Renaissance princes in their patronage of humanist scholarship and Renaissance art, and Islamic writers were not deterred by the language barrier (which is one reason for the prominence of Greek and Jewish scholars as intermediaries), Italian princes and artists alike considered the Ottoman Empire a powerful potential ally or trading partner, a magnanimous patron, and the legitimate heir of the Roman Empire and the prestige that came with it. See, for instance, Jerry Brotton, _The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo_ (Oxford, 2002); Deborah Howard, _Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100-1500_ (New Haven, 2000);  Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, _Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West_ (Ithaca, 2000); Gerald MacLean (ed.), _Re-orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East_ (New York, 2005). For more personal, very readable accounts, consider Natalie Zemon Davis, _Trickster Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus, a Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds_ (London, 2006) and Sir Noel Malcolm, _Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean_ (London, 2015). An extended bibliography, including journal articles, is available on request from the author.

The Qunari, by contrast, are not only far more alien from the human elites dominating Thedosian thought, but also far more isolated. There is little in the way of direct contact with the Qun that is not violent, with most trade done by Rivaini and viddathari traders who are far less conspicuous in the South and are not, generally, immediately associated with the horned grey giants from knightly romances and epic poems, historical genre painting and popular stage plays. Accordingly, even most lay Andrastians have a far less nuanced and pragmatic view of the Qun than Renaissance Westerners did of the Muslims they were in extremely regular contact with – and a templar knight is certainly not a laywoman.


	5. Caput v, quibus milites navis Beatae Amaltheae de edicto operto resciscent

_Caput v, quibus milites navis Beatae Amaltheae de edicto operto resciscent_

An hour before matins, she shook Darmond’s shoulder. “Wake up,” she hissed, trying not to also wake Morgan and Dankrad, in whose cabin the sailing master was crashing while the mage was aboard. She gave her knight another shake, and elicited a groan from him. “Wake up,” she repeated, “And come up on deck.” Darmond’s eyes slowly fluttered open. Automatically, blindly grasping, his hand reached out for his sword, brushing against her knee as it did. She took a step back, trying to ignore the prickling in her leg. “Get dressed, then meet me on the deck.” Justine left the cabin and hurried back upstairs.

Most of the rowers were still asleep, wrapped in woollen blankets and cloaks on their benches, and the deck was largely devoid of life. Emerging from the covered staircase leading below, Justine shivered slightly at the cool, damp morning air that greeted her. A light mist lay over the bay of Belventosa, and the sunless sky appeared more grey than blue. Slowly, she wandered over to the poop deck, near the tiller where Darmond had his station. Ran her finger through the dew on the railing. At the sternpost, the gilded ship’s lantern swayed gently in the breeze as she tried to gather her thoughts.

Darmond emerged from below not soon after, dressed in just a shirt and plain brown hosen. His hair and beard were dishevelled, and dark rings stood beneath his eyes. As usual, he still managed to look very dashing indeed. “Morning to you too,” he grumbled and joined her at the tiller. “What’s wrong?”

She cut right to the chase. “I need you to draft a new course,” she said. “Before dawn, if you can. We’re not going to Val Royeaux.”

That seemed to shake him awake. He raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean? We’ve got our orders.”

“Indeed.” She reached for the rolled-up slip of parchment she’d lodged between two buttons of her doublet, just below her chest. “Here they are. Read it.”

Darmond gave her a long, hard look. Then, he reached for the slip and skimmed it. “I’ve not seen these before,” he finally told her. “Are those the orders the admiral gave you when we left Val Royeaux? The ones you weren’t supposed to open?”

“Circumstances change.”

“It would certainly appear so …” Again, he glanced over the slip of parchment, then back at her. He sighed and leant against the stempost. “Alright, listen, captain. Justine.” That made her tense up; he rarely used her name. When he did, it was inevitably serious. “I know you’re not keen on going to Val Royeaux. I can even understand why, sort of. But those are the orders we got, and they supersede anything else we may have been ordered to do. No, listen. The war isn’t going to end tomorrow. It’s not going to end next year. You heard old Pike yesterday …”

“Don’t,” she sharply cut in. “I don’t want to hear his name. Don’t say it.”

Darmond appeasingly raised his hand. “Alright, alright. But it seems pretty clear to me that this war is going to stretch on for years. Granted, summer will be over by the time we finally reach Rivain, but there’ll be another season of campaigning after that. More than enough time. But until then, we have our orders. From the _Divine_ herself _,_ I’ll remind you. Now, I’m not a great lady like you are, but that sounds fairly important to me. And if the Most Holy is right, who knows?” He grinned and gently nudged her in the side. “You may just turn out to be one of the most important people in the history of humanity since the days of Our Lady. Saint Justine, how’s that sound to you?”

She granted him only the wriest of smiles. “Delusional, that’s what it sounds like. I’ve – all of us – have been reduced to ferrymen. Couriers. There’s no glory in that. No one will even remember our names for this. We faced no dangers but seasickness and gained no victories but over boredom. Come on, Curtis. The Divine’s orders … they dishonour us all. We’re ordained and anointed knights, for Andraste’s sake. I don’t carry this sword just for show, or at least I hope I don’t. _We should be out there_ , fighting! Not wasting our time with this.”

“Justine, we have our orders. Now we may not like them, okay, but that doesn’t mean they’re not orders nonetheless.”

“Are they? Last I remembered, I swore an oath to obey my superiors, not the Divine. And those are the orders the knight-admiral gave me, and I intend to execute them.”

She turned to walk away, but Darmond grabbed her arm. “For the love of … be reasonable, Justine. You can’t just defy the Divine’s commands, the order won’t stand for it! Listen, it’s only a few more weeks to Val Royeaux; if we leave immediately we’ll reach the frontlines by the end of Kingsway. That far up north, that still leaves a few weeks before we have to winter …”

“I have made my decision, Curtis,” Justine broke him off with a glare. “Any my decision is that we will fulfil our original orders and sail north. It’s time for the _Amalthea_ and her crew to take the fight to the infidel. Plot a course, master Darmond, and be quick about it. I wish to inform our brethren immediately after matins.” He moved towards her, opened his mouth to protest, but at once she shut him down. “That is my command, brother.”

Without waiting for a reply, Justine turned on her heel and marched off towards the bow off the ship. Despite her best intentions, she could not help but feel anger bubbling inside her. Curtis Darmond, some friend. If she didn’t know better – hadn’t fought side by side with him – she’d accuse him of cowardice, but as it was Justine could not even wrap her head around his reasoning. Oh, she had herself doubted in the past, but now that she had the letter from d’Allereux writ plain and clear in her hand, there could be no mistaking it. What was Curtis thinking? The spoils of war would suit him, too; he was, after all, a gentleman only in name. No patron, no allies, no money – he needed to grasp what opportunities came his way. Justine knew her friend well-enough to be certain that he wasn’t doing this out of some pious superstition. But – and here she paused in her steps. No, there was no use worrying about it. She was his captain and prefect of this ship, the decision was hers and hers alone to make.

Breathing deeply, she stood at the bow of the deck. The mist was fading, at least for now, and the first redness of dawn was beginning to appear on the horizon. Somewhere in the village of Belventosa, a cock crowed – then another, and a third. With a sigh, Justine sank to her knees, lowered her head, and raised her voice to sing … quietly. “Not to us, oh our Maker, not to us, but to your name belongs all glory …”

By the time she finished her matins, the rest of her knights were starting to come out on the deck. No one liked to spend more time than necessary in the dark and stuffy hold. Even Cavalcanti, after a few days of attempting to spend his time writing in his cabin, had given up on that, and moved upstairs. She had forbidden him from spreading out his books and inks and papers and whatnot on the deck, so he had taken to running up and down the stairs until his robes were drenched in sweat and he had to take a break from writing to rest himself.

After most of her people had come on deck, their own matins complete, she waved Dankrad near her. “Get everyone together,” she told him. “Up here. I want to talk to them.”

“Aye, ser.”

It didn’t take long. Soon, the knights of the _Blessed Amalthea_ , Sister Lydia, and one rather nosy enchanter had assembled on the foredeck near her. Darmond, she noted with mild disappointment, had put on a doublet while she had sung her matins. Still looked dashing, though. “Alright people, listen up,” she began. “None of us expected to make this detour. If things had gone according to plan, we would already be up in the north, fighting the fight of the righteous. Well, you all heard those rats up at the castle last night: they’re shaking in their boots up there. They need all the help they can get.” She reached inside her doublet and pulled out the admiral’s letter, held it up high, then passed it to Ser Berenice. “These are our original orders from Monseigneur d’Allereux,” she proclaimed. “You’ll find they do us more credit than the task the Divine gave us – more dignified – and more sensible, as well. Sister, read it to us.”

The clerk glanced up at her, then straightened out the parchment in her hand. “Very well. _I, Philippe d’Allereux, knight and admiral of the Order of the Humble Brethren of the Temple of the Ashes, to my sister and servant the Lady Justine de Montsalvat, greetings in Andraste. Whereas all of Cantantia trembles at any news of our knights’ most valiant struggle against the impious Qunari, you are charged, commanded and ordained to sail with your ship and all the knights placed in your charge by the Rule of the aforesaid Order to the city of Contarre in the kingdom of Rivain. Whereupon you are charged with presenting these letters to His Excellency the Duke of Seere Lord Garamond de Cardo, commander of said city, who shall entrust you the command and care of a further eleven ships from the allied Andrastian fleet, of the which squadron you shall be the commander, wherefore you are endowed with the authority and blessing of the Masters Vigilant of the aforesaid Order to do so. You are further charged to command and order the aforesaid fleet to the best of your judgement, reason and ability against the infidel, and in particular are charged to approach, seize and destroy as you see fit their castle, haven and camp at that place which they call Marsinkhal. And you are further ordained and granted the right to take prizes in those seas, according to the following allotment: that five in every ten marks of silver shall be entrusted to the purser-general of the aforesaid Order’s army in the aforesaid kingdom, for the good of the aforesaid Order and the true and Andrastian religion, that furthermore you shall give two marks to the knights, priestesses, and other officers serving under your command, and further ten crowns to be divided among the remainder of your sailors according to custom, but that you shall take the remaining two marks three crowns and four pence for yourself. Given at Val Royeaux in my own hand and attested by my signet, the day of St. Nicholas in the forty-fourth year of Exaltations, the fifth age of the Chant’s triumph._ ” With a cough, Ser Berenice came to a close and stepped back.

Justine looked around the circle her people had formed on the foredeck. “There you have it,” she told them. “These are our orders, our original orders. They are what’s important _right now._ They are what is most urgent. Now, it’s true that we have received new orders from the Divine, which is why Messer Cavalcanti is with us.” She smirked. “I don’t know about you people, but last I checked, this ship wasn’t flying the sunburst banner. Because we’re templars, and this is a templar ship! I have sworn an oath to obey my superior officers, and I intend to obey it. And the Divine – well. The Divine is a feeble old woman, a meddlesome troublemaker who knows nothing of war and military strategy. I don’t answer to her, and neither do you.”

She took a deep breath. It was dawning already. “Just think about your brethren fighting the Qunari right now,” she continued, much more quietly. “Your brethren, dying, because there’s a castle that has yet to be raided and seized. And meanwhile, you’re sitting here like a dwarf on his lyrium, getting fat and lazy while your brothers and sisters in Andraste are being slain by the oxmen, one by one! Can we accept this?”

The reaction to this was, perhaps, slightly less enthusiastic than she’d hoped. Berenice and Morgan were nodding along, at least. “And now,” she continued, unperturbed, “think about what we’d do if we were up there, fighting alongside them. Imagine it! You know what they say the Qunari’s realms are like. The finest spices, cheap as dirt and just as plentiful. Gold and pearls the size of eyes around every person’s neck. Silks so fine and soft they feel like water on the skin. I promise you, people, we’ll take out share of prizes. All of us will return home rich! But more than that – heroes. We will win unimaginable glory! Our brothers and sisters waiting out the war in their cosy castles and Circles will hear our famous names and bow their heads in shame! Yes, because Darmond and Markenbach, d’Onterre and Dumhythe, La Tour and _Amalthea –_ our names will fly to the four corners of Cantantia! If we do this, lords will feast us, peasants toast us, knights will wish to _be_ us. Even the emperor himself – no, even the Divine’s most holy majesty will have to pay us homage!”

She took a step forward, and in one fluid motion drew her sword, flipped it around and, grabbing it by the blade, held out the hilt towards her knights. Gilded wiring and pommel seemed to sparkle in the dawn’s red gleam like sacred fire. “Well? Who’s with me?”

Morgan had a look around their hemicycle, rubbed his neck. Then, he took a step toward her and laid one huge hand around the hilt. Compared to the monstrous weapons she usually saw him wield, her own arming sword seemed a spindly twig in his maws. “Oh, Void take it. I didn’t join the order to sit on my arse and play ferryman. Let’s do this.”

Justine grinned at him, tried to hide her relief. For a moment, she had feared she had badly misplayed the situation. She had no idea how, exactly, she would have gotten herself out of _that_ mess. Now that Morgan – one of her oldest brothers in arms, whose gigantic stature and uncouth manners expertly concealed his exceptional talent for gaining the respect and love of his peers – had come forward, others would follow. Of course, she’d had little doubts that he would jump on the opportunity; the Fereldan had made no secret of his eagerness to get back into the fight.

And indeed, next was Ser Berenice. From the looks of her, it was clear she had skipped matins altogether in favour of lighter ways of appreciating the Maker’s creation. Her doublet was buttoned unevenly, throwing unsightly folds where she had hurriedly mismatched buttons and holes, and she was not wearing a sword. Under a crown of dishevelled ginger braiding, however, she was grinning at Justine. “I was waiting for you to say something like that. My sword thirsts for action!”

“I imagine that’s why it’s gone on ahead without us,” Morgan teased her, prompting some very mild chuckles and a faint blush on his fellow knight’s cheeks.

“Funny. But yeah, I’m with you, captain. Just say the word.”

“Thank you.” Raising an eyebrow, Justine turned to the others – Dankrad, Sister Lydia, and Darmond. “Well?”

There was a bit of shuffling. Then, Dankrad, shoulders slumped, briefly laid his hand around the sword. “You are my captain and I vill obey.” Then, he took a step back and was silent. Well, Justine told herself, better than nothing. She would have had real trouble taking this ship to war without a master of artillery. She turned her gaze towards the next knight. “Curtis?”

Her sailing master took a moment to look around. All eyes were on him. Finally, he stepped forward and reached for the sword. “Alright, captain. It’s your decision, and I’ll sail our _Amalthea_ where you bid me. But I want it to be noted in the log that I do this under protest.” For a long moment, their eyes met. There was no cowardice in them. But, no, Justine thought, something else: remorse. A silent plea for forgiveness. Well, she bitterly grumbled to herself, he should have thought of that sooner, shouldn’t he?

But he _had_ said it, and affirmed his obedience. That left only Sister Lydia. All eyes had turned to her. Justine couldn’t tell from her hair – shorn – and her clothing – a plain white woollen habit – whether she had again violated her vows with Ser Berenice, but she had very little doubt that was what had transpired in the earliest hours of the morning. The sister was fidgeting from one foot to the other, chewing on her lower lip – a far sight from her usual cocky self. “No,” she finally said. “I’m sorry, captain, I can’t do this. I’m a templar, yes, but I’m a priestess first. My sacred duty is to spread the Chant of Light to all four corners of the world. And if the Most Holy has a plan to do so, I must follow her.” Her gaze shot over to Berenice, whose eyes had gone wide. “I’m sorry. In this matter, I can only pray for you, not stand with you.”

Justine lowered her sword. “I understand.” Carefully, she pushed it back into its scabbard. “We will need a chaplain, though. If you will not condone what we must do, will you at least accompany us to sing us the Chant and bless our swords when we sail to smite the infidel?”

Again, the sister glanced at Berenice, but the knight replied first. “That won’t be necessary,” Berenice hurried to say. “If she can’t stand the thought of being by our side, let’s not make her. I’m sure we can find another chaplain with the army in Rivain. A few weeks without a priestess won’t condemn us all to the Void.”

“Ren …”

“Don’t call me that!” Lydia shrunk back at the rebuke. “You have no right to call me that. Captain, let’s … let’s just drop her off here. Please.”

Justine felt only the slightest pang of guilt as she shook her head. “If Sister Lydia wishes to stay with us, that is her right. Do you want that, sister?”

Defiantly avoiding her lover’s failed attempts to avoid staring at her, the priestess nodded. “Someone’s got to remind you all to say your prayers,” she tried to joke, but it came out more like the moribund humour of a convict on her way to the scaffold. “I’ll come with you to tend to your spiritual well-being, but I’d also like my protest to be noted in the log. If you would be so kind, Re- Messer d’Onterre.”

Justine nodded. “Make it so. Now, I believe Master Darmond has charted a course. Messer Cavalcanti, my apologies, but you will have to complete your journey on your own. The cog over there is the _Cabillaud_ out of Jader, she is headed for Val Royeaux. I will have Ser Berenice give you a writ of liberate to pay for passage, and …”

“Ha-hang on there!” The mage had lunged forward. His long, old-fashioned blue velvet overgown billowed slightly. “You never asked me if I wanted to stay!”

Justine wasn’t _entirely_ sure what she’d just heard. It sounded almost as if the mage was asking to stay aboard the _Amalthea_ as she sailed north towards the war, but that couldn’t possibly be right. “I beg your pardon, messer?”

“I want to stay.” He spread his arms. “I am no knight. I’m not a battlemage, either. In truth, I am more familiar with books than swords, and frankly I’d much rather be at home in my library than anywhere else. But at this moment in time, the future of our world lies in the balance. Who wins this war will decide the fate of all Cantantia.”

“You’re vastly exaggerating, as usual,” Dankrad cut in. “This is not our first war against the Qunari and it shan’t be our last.”

“Maybe. But either way – towns, regions, even kingdoms will rise and fall with its outcome. It is only fitting that this war should be recorded for posterity. Let me come with you, captain, and I shall write that history, in the style of the ancients and the great Rossi and his disciples.” He smiled thinly through the opening of his chaperone. “And, of course, I will take great cares to ensure its heroes are rightly remembered.”

Justine narrowed her eyes. She still wasn’t sure if the mage wasn’t joking. Still, she figured, having a mage aboard would prove useful once they got into combat. “Alright,” she finally concluded. “But I expect you to follow orders. If you can’t do that, we’ll drop you off in Rialto along the way.”

“You’ll have no trouble from me, I swear it by the blood of Our Lady.”

“… very well. Now, it’s past dawn, so move it, people! I want to leave this port behind within the hour!”

Her knights quickly left her, each on their own: Berenice to her cabin, presumably to get dressed and have a good cry, Sister Lydia to the hold, presumably just to get away. Dankrad and Morgan took their posts along the main walkway, beneath the masts, to supervise the mast crews’ work from below. And Darmond just went back to his tiller, from where he controlled every movement of the _Amalthea_ and her crew. But not today, not this once. Maker, he shouldn’t have resisted her. She could understand a priestess being wary about ignoring a direct order from the Divine, but Darmond was her brother knight, and her oldest friend. Had she done something to offend him? Her father had once, when it still seemed like she would come into land and title by marriage, told her that the key to assuring one’s subordinates’ loyalty lay in making sure they knew that there would always be a place in one’s household for them, and a seat at one’s table. She glanced down the ship, where she could barely make out Darmond slightly hidden behind the poop deck palanquin. No, she had done nothing wrong.

Suddenly furious, she kicked the railing, hard enough that a light tremor went through the nearby foremast rigging. He had no right to treat her thus! And maybe his disloyalty was not for anything _she_ had done, but rather because he simply knew no better. A child of the city, with no land or title to his name and a name as transient as the waves of the ocean. How could a man like that, who grew up among burghers and artisans and learned to haggle long before the sword, who had no legacy to fight for and no name to uphold, a knight only in name and not so different from cut-up thugs in seedy taverns – how could a man like that learn loyalty? It stung to think of him that way, but it made sense. He simply lacked the proper breeding, the proper education, the proper decency. And to think he’d fooled her for so many years!

She realised that she had her hand closed around the pommel of her sword, so tight it was beginning to go numb. Quickly, she lifted her hand off it and stretched her digits.

And the others? They’d feel the fallout of the rift that had appeared between Sister Lydia and Berenice for a good while yet, she knew. Those two didn’t argue often, but when they did, wounds inevitably festered for weeks on end. And Dankrad had clearly not been all too happy with her choice, although she was quite certain the newest addition to her captain’s table would not challenge his superior officer. Still, things hadn’t gone as smoothly as she had hoped. But they’d come around, once combat loomed, once the smell of blood and gunpowder set their hearts aflutter and their veins on fire. That, she was certain of.

“Ahem.”

She whirled around, hand already flying to her sword, but it was only Cavalcanti. Slowly, she relaxed. “Is there something I can do for you, messer?”

“Quite the contrary actually. I was thinking: have you ever considered taking lessons in rhetoric? You could use them.”

 


	6. Caput vi, in qua militibus divisis discordiā in se verti uti incipient

_Caput vi, in qua militibus divisis discordiā in se verti uti incipient_

* * *

They sailed back north. Their detour in the opposite direction had robbed them of the most expedient winds, so that they spent a lot of time under oars, tacking into the wind.

Equally adverse were the headwinds that were blowing against her at the captain’s table. Her decision to turn back on the Divine’s command bad created a rift amongst the crew. Berenice and Sister Lydia had all but stopped talking to each other, avoiding each other whenever possible and, at most, sneaking furtive glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking. The others, thankfully, had maintained a civil, if increasingly cool, working relationship, but it would take time for things to wash over. This wasn’t merely a minor disagreement between friends, it went far beyond that. Those who had protested her decision quietly accused their comrades of a lack of faith and of being reckless glory-seekers; while her supporters – first and foremost, Ser Berenice, who had turned attack dog to cope with her separation from Sister Lydia – railed against the others’ disloyalty and, indeed, cowardice. Enchanter Cavalcanti’s valiant efforts at making peace between the warring factions had so far been utterly unsuccessful, in part because no one understood just what in the Void he was talking about most of the time.

But Justine remained convinced that these divisions would blow over, although she would never be able to trust her crew the same way again. What was more concerning by far was that the rest of the _Amalthea’s_ crew had turned out to have their own opinions on the matter. Oarsmen, sailors, arbalists and marines: each felt obliged to add their own two pennies to a shipwide debate that was starting to get out of control. Already, Justine and her officers had been obliged to intercede in several altercations, and a number of oarsmen had had to be moved to different benches to ensure harmony among the rowers. The rigging crews had largely split evenly, with the foremast crew supporting her decision while the main and most of the mizzen mast were against it, and the arbalists had turned against the marines according to their masters’ positions. Justine had, on several occasions, felt obliged to testily explain to particular offenders that they were ordinary seamen on a ship which she and the other knights commanded, and that if they felt so strongly about the running of this vessel, she would be more than obliged to maroon them on a desert island somewhere so they could found a republic all of their own.

It didn’t help much with her suppers, though.

Conversations at the captain’s table had largely devolved into brief, platitudinous exchanges as the range of safe subjects seemed to shrink with every day. Politics or religion – let alone the war – had of course been off-limits immediately, and once sections of the crew had begun to make their discontent known, so were most ship-board operations. And the current tensions all but forbade her from bringing up almost anything else – including all the anecdotes and memories that accumulated among any group of people who spent sufficient time together. She had presided over glum tables before, when extended spans of time at sea had made them all restless and aggressive, but never before had history been buried thus deeply.

So for the most part, she only got to know Cavalcanti better.

She didn’t actually know many mages: contrary to popular opinion, not all templars were trained hunters of evil magics. All went through a time of service at a Circle, but after that most were assigned to far-flung castles, outposts, manors and Chantries. Others served in the order’s fleet, as she did, or in its administration, as diplomats, financiers, bankers, traders, pursers, clerks, doctors, and all those other little positions that kept the order’s machinery to function from day to day. Apart from Cavalcanti and her brief time at the White Spire, where she had spent most her time in lessons intended to groom her for command, she had only really encountered mages in passing. A sedan chair with translucent lace hangings passing her by in the streets, a merchant of books, potions or enchanted trinkets, in the entourages of some of the great magnates of the empire, who could afford to keep mages with them permanently. Her parents had used to hire a mage who lived in one of their villages to advise them on arcane matters, and once a year to enchant apples, pine cones and toys so they appeared to sparkle in all lights, flutter in the air on golden wings, and other such things, as gifts for Justine and her many siblings on Satinalia. She wondered if they still did that, now that most of their children had left home.

But despite that, mages still tended to be a bit of a mystery to her. Watching them from afar, most of them had always seemed utterly boring to her, spending as they did so much of their lives buried in books. That, too, was how they looked on stage; no comedy was complete without a buffoonish wizard spouting nonsense phrases in a made-up language. But beneath all that lay a deeper, more primal wariness, drilled into her by instructors time and time again. Mages held unimaginable power, which they could use for good, for evil, and everything in between. If you saw a mage on the battlefield, you’d better hope they were on your side.

Cavalcanti was closer to the stereotype. Even now, he tended towards sudden bouts of seasickness and had to storm to the railing to empty his stomach, but every time he simply washed his mouth with wine, sharpened his quill, and went back to work. What he was writing, she didn’t know, a fleeting attempt to glance over had been foiled when it turned out he was writing in a strange alphabet that she presumed was either Old Dwarfish or a truly abominable hand. She could, of course, have asked him: but she suspected she wouldn’t be able to get him to shut up.

She’d turned down his offer of tutoring, of course, but he had continued both to offer unsolicited lectures on a variety of topics ranging from the exegesis of the Chant (which must surely interest such a pious knight as herself) over the proper method of humanist education (in case she ever had children in spite of her vows) to the particular arguments of this or that particular long-dead author (just in case she ever started to care about such things, she supposed?). In between, he needled her with questions, and Justine was equally annoyed at his incessant probing and impressed with his quick intellect.

Tonight was no exception. They had passed the island of Llomerryn the day before without calling at any of its ports, and Cavalcanti had clearly seen something that interested him. “I saw a crumbling tower on the shore to our right today, around noon,” he said, toying with an apple. Justine’s eyes couldn’t help but follow the fruit as it rolled back and forth across the table; she wished he’d just eat it and be done with it. “It looked unlike any building I’ve ever seen. Who built it?”

“Zat vould be ze Qunari,” Dankrad, who had sailed these seas before aboard the _Blessed Nestan_. “Zey briefly held Llomerryn during ze Blight, but ve took it back afterwards.”

“Ah, yes, I read about that! Fra Lorenzo Loro talks about it in his _Garachel sive Historia flagelli ultimi._ ‘Now everyone will agree that the Maker must in the first days of Creation have ordained that no calamity should ever befall His faithful on its lonesome, so that in the end of it relief should be all the sweeter.’ The Qunari built those towers all over the shores of Llomerryn to fortify them and watch out for incoming ships. I never thought I’d see them myself!”

She chuckled. “You weren’t so keen when you first came aboard. Getting a taste for the sea?”

The mage made a face. “The sea? Not so much. In truth, I’d be much more comfortable at home in my library at the Circle. But – I’m having the strangest sensation. As if I could keep on going forever, far beyond our destination, for no reason other than to see what lies beyond the horizon. Does that make sense to you?”[1]

“I suppose.”

“The Qunari got pretty far last time they invaded,” Berenice pointedly continued. There was very little in the way of reaction around the table; over the past weeks, Justine’s critics had learned not to let themselves be baited. “Imagine what they could to this time.”

“They’re not actually that far away,” Cavalcanti added obliviously. “After Llomerryn, the Rivaini forces were going to take back their outpost on the isle of Santa Alizia just off the coast of the province of Poscia, but money ran out and they had to make peace. So the island continues to be held by the Qunari, to the great distress and suffering of its Andrastian inhabitants.”

“They use it to stage naval raids against nearby cities and attack Andrastian shipping, you know. It’s an active outpost. Chances are their fleet is tied up further north, but they might still take exception to us sailing past.” She turned to Morgan. “Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about. How are your people? And yours, too, Dankrad.”

Morgan grinned. “Spoilt, lazy, and itching for a fight. They’ll do fine.”

“Ve have been running battle drills and I am pretty confident zey … vill do. Zere is a real chance zat zey vill break on enemy contact, but before zat, ve vill do some damage.”

She nodded. While she hadn’t personally overseen them, she was moderately confident in the crew she had assembled – almost all were experienced hands, and many wore the brown tunics of templar serjeants. If the arbalists and marines would hold as their masters promised, the oar crews would do so also. She had personally gone through the _Amalthea’s_ stores of weapons and armour, and had found no significant faults. She had also unpacked her own armour, polished it and laid it out in her cabin, so that she wouldn’t be forced to waste time when putting it on. She expected her knights had done the same. No one wanted to be caught unarmoured when battle called.

“Very good. Darmond … under our current course and winds, when will we pass Santa Alizia?”

“Tomorrow,” he suggested. “If the winds don’t turn and we spare the rowers for combat, I’m guessing around dusk.”

“Good. I want to be kept appraised of any changes in that time. I want to avoid a fight for now, but we need to be ready if they come for us.”

“Aye, captain.”

Slowly, she let her gaze sweep over her people. No one seemed to be paying her much attention. Lydia was picking at her foot without ever taking a bite, and Morgan was using his dagger to decorate the table with his fingernails. Justine gave a heavy sigh. “Alright, listen up people. I know that some of you had and still have objections against coming here. The fact of the matter, however, is that we’re here now, and there is nothing any of us can do about it. The only way forward is further north, do you understand? That means we have to sail past Santa Alizia, and _that_ means I need you all at your best. The Qunari are fearsome warriors, and chances are they have numbers against us, as well. If you do not feel you can command your people to the best of your abilities, I need to know about it now. If you do not feel you can obey my orders to the letter, I also need to know about it. Is that clear?”

A chorus of mumbled ‘aye, captains’ were her only answer.

More than slightly irritated, Justine wiped her knife on the napkin and returned it to its sheath. “Very well then. Keep your gear prepared, we won’t have more than five introits’ worth of time.[2] Darmond, I want arms and armour distributed to the rowers before the fortress even comes in sight, is that clear?”

The sailing master nodded. “I’ll give the word.”

“Good. If that is all, you are dismissed.” And that, it would seem, was all she could do to prepare. Justine already knew she’d spent most of the following day pacing around the ship, itching for battle. She’d only ever been in a handful of serious – largely boarding actions against fights – but there was something about the anticipation of combat that made her heart beat faster and her blood flow hot. Maker forgive her, she could already envision the stench of blood, sweat, and cold steel, could feel the inside of her helmet fogging over under her hot breath and perspiration as her vision narrowed to just a slit. Could feel the rush that would come over her when she took lyrium before the battle, her senses sharpening and the low hum of the Fade at the back of her head. Avoid a fight she must, but long for it she did.

Her knights rose from the table, supper done with, and retreated, largely below decks to polish their armour, say their prayers or whatever else they did on such occasions. Cavalcanti remained behind. She raised an eyebrow at him. “Is there something else I can do for you, messer?”

“Nothing, captain, thank you. It just seems so odd to think that, not a month ago, my greatest concern was whether my presses would be able to meet the demand for the new edition of Agric’s _Twelve Dialogues on the Surface._ And now I’m sitting here, about to go to war. Captain, tell me true – what are our chances?”

She took a sip of wine and shrugged. “Hard to say. There’s a good chance we won’t have to fight, at all. A templar war galley is neither a juicy nor an easy target.”

“But you’re clearly expecting the worst.”

“Not expecting. Hoping, maybe. Either way, if there’s even a chance that you’ll have to face the enemy, you don’t want to be caught unprepared.”

The mage leant forward. “I understand. But … let us assume that we do have to fight. What is going to happen?”

Justine rolled her eyes. “How am I supposed to know? Remember, this isn’t one of your books, where only the important stuff is mentioned and everything is neatly summarised in a diagram. In real life, things never work out as planned, and usually there are too many things going on at once to tell what’s important and what isn’t. Best case scenario? We get attacked and win, losing not too many men and maybe even capturing a prize.”

“Alright. What’s the worst case?”

She chuckled. “No use thinking about that.”

“Ah. I see. Just one more question, then.”

“What would that be?”

“What am I supposed to do? I’ve never been in a fight before, not even a scuffle. But I want to help.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re the mage, you tell me. I was thinking fireballs or something like that, unless you’ve got a better idea.”

At that, Cavalcanti fidgeted in his chair. “Fireballs? Goodness. I don’t … I don’t think I can do that? I mean, I’ve never tried, but … I’ve read about that, and it seems very difficult.”

“Alright.” Justine lightly swirled the wine in her goblet. If the battle went well tomorrow night, she might open the nice red Dalish from her personal stocks, the one her sister had sent her. “So what can you do?”

“Uh, not very much I’m afraid. I’m not a battlemage. I can cast a simple hex, most of the time. Other than that … well, not much, I’m afraid. I left my staff at home.”

“Can you heal, at least?”

“Well, I have read Farenia’s _De re medica,_ and Parafarenius’ _Magna ars antiseptica_ and most recently Sugitor Genpax’s _De humani corporis fabrica_  –”

She cut him off. “I’m not interested in what you’ve read. I want to know whether you can cast healing spells. Because we’re going to need them. My people are going to need them.” The mage’s expression was unmistakeable. With a sigh, Justine leant back in her curule chair. “In other words, you’re useless. Meaning no offense.” The mage was quite clearly offended and blustering up for a retort, but she raised her hand to stave off _that_ particular calamity. “Suppose I …” She stopped. The idea had popped into her head seemingly out of nowhere, and at once she was appalled to even have thought of it. It was not only strictly forbidden, it was also immoral, heretical and mildly terrifying.

“Suppose what?” Cavalcanti asked. Damn that curiosity of his.

“Suppose …” she slowly picked up again, thinking as she went along. After all – if she did do it, their chances might go up tremendously. “Suppose I gave you … lyrium. What could you do then?”

“Lyri- Andraste’s ashes! You can’t be serious.” He hesitated. “Hang on. You couldn’t possibly … are you saying you’ve got lyrium _on board the ship?_ Maker, I always thought those rumours about templars were just malicious slander! They’re true, aren’t they?”

“Not so loud!” Justine glanced over to the rowing benches. No one seemed to have paid Cavalcanti’s outburst any attention. “It’s not something we like to spread around.”

“Clearly not! It’s unbelievable. It’s evil. Maker’s grace, it’s almost blood magic! Don’t you realise what great danger you’re exposing yourself too, in mind, spirit, and body?”

Frowning, she leant back. “Don’t presume to judge us, mage. Your privilege – your ability to sit hunched over books in some cushy fortress somewhere – continues to exist only because of templars’ sacrifices. It’s true, we drink a lyrium solution before going into battle, to augment our strength and speed. It even gives us a faint connection to the Fade, which we can channel against mages and demons. It is a great sin, no doubt, but we are not the magisters of old. We are the holy knights of Andraste Herself, and we act with full sanction from the Divine.”

Cavalcanti had risen to his feet, and was pacing up and down the poop deck, gesticulating wildly. “Does that make you without fail? Does it make you immune to that vile poison’s corrupting effects? What happens if – Maker forgive – templars turn against the Maker’s law?”

“It has yet to happen. Templars falter and go rogue all the time, but never once have they taken lyrium with them, as far as I’m aware. We’re extremely careful about it, trust me. True, maybe we will at some point be judged for it. But in the meantime … we’ll do what we have to, for peace and the greater glory of the Maker.” She leant forward and folded her hands in her lap. “Now listen to me, Cavalcanti. No mage – perhaps outside the Imperium – has used lyrium in centuries. I know you’re wary, and you have good reason to be. But these are exceptional circumstances, wouldn’t you agree? All of our lives hang in the balance here. _If_ you took just a little bit of lyrium … there’s a chance it will work on you as it did on the magisters of old. It will enhance your power, just briefly. You’ll be able to cast the spells we need. Please, messer. I beg you.”

Cavalcanti had come to a stop. An anguished grimace distorted his face. “The very thought of it …”

“I don’t like it any more than you do! But if you won’t do it for me or my crew, or even for yourself, do it for posterity. Write however much you wish about this, or however little. Expose the order’s error if you like; I’ve never thought highly of it myself. And if it works … if it doesn’t harm you, or drive you mad, or sunder the Veil as it enters mage’s blood … then mention it to the Divine when you do meet her. Tell her, if you please, that lyrium is not harmful, that it will strengthen our mages. That you will not only be more effective on the battlefield, but that your magic, properly augmented and used according to proper religion, will do so much good …” She rose to her feet and walked over to Cavalcanti by the railing. “The greatest lords of Orlais, and the richest peasants, sometimes hire mages to fertilise their fields and improve their harvest. Even the strongest mage can only do so much, and scarcely one in fifty acres of field land is enchanted like that. But imagine if we gave them lyrium. We could end famine forever. Mages could heal all the sick, from whatever disease, if only we gave them lyrium.”

She leant back, resting on her sword, and had to laugh. “You know, I’m not much of a thinker. I’m not some sort of visionary, or a scholar. But just talking to you over the last couple of weeks – I suppose it’s changed the way I think about things. It’s foolish of us to waste so much magic which could be put to good use for all Cantantia. All it means is that you mages lock yourself in your towers, writing and reading, where you are no good to anyone. We must change that.” She put a hand on the [rolled] shoulder of his robe. “Take the lyrium tomorrow, messer mage. Do it for all of us, if not for yourself.”

The mage swallowed hard, looking out over the ocean waves below them. “I’ll … consider it.” His face was pale, as though he was about to be sick. “I’ll consider it.”

Justine nodded. “I can ask no more.” She took a step back, straightened out her doublet and righted her sword belt. “Think about it. The Maker is with us.”

“I hope you’re right, captain. I hope you’re right.”

* * *

 

[1] Personally, this author believes the theory that “man became curious” only in the Renaissance (when Petrarch famously, if not in quite so many words, originates the idiom of ‘climbing the mountain because it is there’) is neo-Burckhardtian bullshit, but hey, why not.

[2] Justine is using a common time measurement based on how long it takes to recite the first chapter of the first canticle of the Chant of Light, Andraste I – about 3 minutes, using the formalised standard intonation and pacing. Usage is roughly analogous to the use of the Pater Noster as a measure of brief time periods in the medieval Church.


	7. Caput vii, quibus proelium fiet

_Caput vii, quibus proelium fiet_

* * *

Around an hour after dusk that night, they anchored the _Amalthea_ in a somewhat secluded bay and went to sleep.

Justine took off her sword, then removed her boots, doublet, and hosen. She added her sign-manual to the day’s log entry which Berenice had submitted for her approval, then locked the book in her strongbox together with the sea charts and other valuables. Then, she retired to bed.

Three hours later, Ser Curtis Darmond unlocked the last of the chests containing the _Amalthea’s_ stores of weapons and armour. “Start distributing them,” he hissed to Sister Lydia, standing next to him with a dimmed lantern. “Remember, only to the men wearing yellow armbands. Get the night’s guards and foremen to help you, but be quiet about it!”

The sister gave him a silent nod in response and, demonstrating surprising strength considering her slight and spindly shape, lifted a bundle of arming swords wrapped in coarse wool out of one of the chests before hurrying up the stairs to the deck with them. Curtis would return to help her later, but for now, he hurried down the hold between tightly-stacked barrels, crates, sacks and bales of cloth towards aft. He had to hold on to his sword to keep it from clanging against the cargo, and every now and then he felt himself halt in his steps and hold his breath as a plank groaned underneath his feet. Each time, he could have sworn it was loud enough to wake the Maker Himself, but no one ever seemed to notice.

Andraste’s drawers, though, he wasn’t any good at this. His mother, on his leaving Ostwick, had given him her usual litany about the proper behaviour of an Andrastian knight. How many times had he heard that? Never let the enemy see your back, defend the defenceless, protect the Chantry and the one true faith and keep the Maker’s commandments, and, above all, always be honest, loyal and true in all your words and actions. To your friends, to your masters, to your liege. How many times had he, a stripling of a boy then, hurled mockery back at her: a failed knight, with no friends, no masters, no liege, who should rather exchange her sword for a spinning wheel or a hammer, or indeed a beggar’s bowl. And yet, out of all the lessons his mother had ever taught him, this was the one that had always stuck.

Justine was two out of those. The third was the order. He could not be loyal to all three.

He ascended the stairs up to the poop deck. Dankrad was waiting for him, surrounded by his arbalists. Unlike the _Amalthea’s_ rowers and sailors, both Dankrad’s and Morgan’s contingents of soldiers kept their gear by their sides at all times, and now the fifteen crossbowmen under Dankrad’s command were fully outfitted with sallets, gambesons, mail shirts, brigandines, daggers, bucklers, bolts and their large war crossbows, each of them two feet long and designed to pierce multiple layers of armour at close range. Hopefully, Darmond thought at the sight, it wouldn’t come to that. “Are your people ready?” he asked his brother knight, who had foregone full armour but was wearing a long gambeson, a mail shirt, and a sallet tilted back into his neck.

“As ready as ve’ll ever be,” the Anders replied calmly. Always so calm. Darmond was rather jealous, his own heart was racing. “Once ze signal is given, ve vill take ze captain and her supporters among ze foremen into custody, as planned.”

Uneasily, Darmond glanced over to the marksmen. “Keep your people in check,” he quickly asked. “I don’t want any bloodshed over this.”

“Only ze Maker knows what time may hold.”

“Very reassuring.” He looked over his shoulder. Against the faint light of the lantern raised amidships, he could make out Sister Lydia’s robed shape and the silhouettes of the oarsmen she had enlisted to help her, carrying arms and armour up onto the deck. Already, a sizeable group of armed and helmeted men and women were gathering on the foredeck. “This could get out of hand fast.”

“Zen I advise you vake ze captain quickly, before anything can happen.”

“Noted. Wait for my signal.”

Adjusting his sword belt, Darmond hurried back belowdecks. He himself had foregone armour – he found it had a way of appearing threatening, and making people do reckless things. There was a mistake he had to correct, but he had no plans of wetting his blade tonight.

A mistake, yes – that’s what it had been. Insubordination, certainly, even a fool could see that the Divine’s orders overrode those of the knight-admiral. Reckless, absolutely, but that was Justine for you. And a mistake? Definitely. Darmond still couldn’t entirely understand why Justine had done as she had. Oh, she yearned for glory, what young knight didn’t? She wanted to take the fight to the enemy, and did not every templar on this ship feel the same way? But Justine wasn’t just any knight, that much was obvious to him. She was a La Tour de Montsalvat, a scion of one of the oldest and most highly-respected dynasties in the Orlesian Empire. Her name would carry glory and renown wherever she went, no matter what she did, for the rest of her life; and with that would come the opportunities to distinguish herself more personally: as a commander, as a general, or even as an imperial minister. Maker knew the order’s top echelons didn’t always take the supposed separation between the order and the secular world all that seriously where their posts, sinecures and titles were concerned.

Yet he, Ser Curtis Darmond of Fletchers’ Lane, Ostwick, would not benefit from Justine’s decision, no matter what she might think. Neither would any of the other knights aboard, excepting perhaps Ser Berenice, whose family was almost as old and renowned as the captain’s. Their lives, they had always known – and Darmond had certainly always known that – had doomed them to a career of utter mediocrity. Only a miracle could raise a boor like himself who was barely even a knight, let alone noble, to the lofty heights Justine was already taking for granted. Did he grudge his friend? No. He never had, and he would have been more than content to live out his life in service to her and the order, riding her coattails as she pleased.

Until Cavalcanti had come aboard. “Bring him to Val Royeaux,” the order had gone, and with it – and Justine’s reaction to it – a host of new options had opened up for him. Doing what he was doing now – it wasn’t mutiny, he told himself, not really, they were only restoring their original orders – was the only opportunity he had ever been given in his life. He would not be found missing when the time came to grasp it.

And that, that was what had caused him to stray from his mother’s tortured old adages. Loyalty, honour, friendship – nice to have, but there came a time when one could no longer bear mediocrity.

Thus castigating himself, he stood in front of the door to his – or rather, Justine’s – cabin. He raised his hand to knock – it wouldn’t touch the wood. Sighing softly, he sank against the low door, resting his brow against it. It was far too late for regrets. To back down now – not only would they sail against the Qunari tomorrow; not only would many of their people die, but they, the conspirators, would spend the rest of their journey in irons. Whatever else the order’s tribunal might have thought of Justine’s actions, an unsuccessful mutiny would only serve to vindicate her.

He knocked. Once, twice, thrice. He didn’t wait for a reply, opened the door, and walked in. “Captain,” he said, softly. There was no need to be cruel. Justine had always had a light sleep, and already her eyes were fluttering open.

“Curtis?,” she murmured at the sound of his voice. “Something wrong?”

“I’m afraid so.” He stepped closer to her berth and picked up the sheathed sword that leant against it. “Captain, please get up.”

“What … what’s going on?” Mechanically, Justine swung her bare legs out of her bunk. She righted herself, proud as a queen despite only wearing a shirt and drawers, and her eyes fixed on her sword in Darmond’s hand. “My sword,” she said. “Give it to me.”

He took a step back. “I’m sorry, captain. Please get dressed and come with me.”

“What … Curtis, what are you doing?”

“The right thing.” It didn’t sound very convincing, Darmond thought, but he suspected this was the sort of thing he should be saying now. “No one will be harmed, I promise.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she defiantly crossed her arms across her chest. “I don’t know why I expected better from you. And to think I ever considered you a friend. What is this about, Darmond, because it sure as the Void isn’t about spreading the Chant and all that bullshit? Money? Do you think this is how you get your own command, is that it?” Her pretty round face distorted in a nasty grimace. “Or is it just because you’re too much of a damned coward to face the Qunari?”

He did not warrant her accusations with a response. Using her sword, he pointed in the direction of the chest in which she kept her clothes. “Get dressed.”

“Fuck you.”

“I would prefer not to parade you in front of your crew in your drawers.” She made no indication of moving, so he sighed, unclasped his maroon templar’s cloak, and handed it to her. “Put it on or don’t. We’re going above.” He loosely wrapped her sword belt over his shoulder like a baldric, and drew his own weapon. “Move,” he commanded, indicating the door.

Without any outward protest, Justine marched out of the door. She held her head as high as though she were on a parade ground. He’d always admired her posture, truth be told, had thought it dignified and impressive, and good in combat besides. Right now, it only served to annoy him. “Faster, please.”  She set one foot on the stairs leading above, then hesitated, unfolded the cloak, and quickly buttoned it over her shoulder. The large maroon garment with the order’s flaming sword embroidered in white on the shoulder fully obscured her body, so that only her bare feet and a narrow slit along her right leg remained visible. Darmond gave a pointed twitch with the tip of his sword –

Justine righted herself, contemptuously glanced back at her treacherous sailing master. “I want you to know,” she said, so matter-of-factly as to surprise herself, “that you will rot in the Void for this. You are betraying your oath, Darmond. If I had my sword –

“Captain?” Her eyes shot over to where the voice had come from. So did Darmond’s.

Berenice stood in the door of the small cabin she’d used to share with Sister Lydia, and now had to herself. She, herself, was more adequately dressed, in a long grey nightgown. She held her sword belt in her hand, but was far too slow and sleepy to react in time before Darmond had also drawn Justine’s sword and was directing it towards the clerk, now wielding a sword in each hand. “Drop that,” he commanded, “Now, sister.” Justine wasn’t sure whether Berenice was complying out of fear or shock, but comply she did. “Join her,” Darmond commanded, indicating Justine’s back. Slowly, without a word, Berenice stepped over to Justine’s side. Their glances locked for a moment, and Berenice’s was one of utter confusion. “Now, up the stairs, before everyone on this ship wakes up.”

With two swords pointed at their unarmoured backs, they had little choice but to comply, and they soon found themselves on the deck of the _Amalthea_. Some of the mutineers had lit lanterns, so that it was brightly illuminated. Justine briefly looked along the length of her ship; at the prow, Morgan’s marines knelt on the planks, disarmed and guarded by crossbowmen. Further down, she recognised her more outspoken supporters among the rowers, including many of the serjeants, huddled together as their comrades brandished swords and axes over them.

There was no jeering, and certainly no leering, as they stepped onto the deck. Looking around the mutineers’ faces, Justine saw only deep solemnity. Fitting, considering their leaders. “Sister Lydia,” she drawled. “I should have expected you would have a part of this. Tell me, where in the Chant does it say ‘thou shalt betray’?”

“This is not a betrayal,” the priestess softly replied, though her eyes remained fixed on Ser Berenice. The knight defiantly avoided her former lover’s gaze. “This is about setting right your mistakes, captain.”

She ignored the admonishment. “And you, Dankrad? I expected better from you. Is this how you behaved aboard the _Nestan_ , too? Did you mutiny against her captain, as well? Hah, where is that famous honour of yours now?”

“Hale and healthy, in my sword,” he evenly replied, before drawing the same. “Follow me.”

Under arms, he let them to the poop deck, where one of the sailors – the main topwoman, in fact – was waiting for them under the canopy, ropes in hand. “Really, Dankrad? Bonds? You would stoop so low?”

“If it meant you vould be unable to interfere? Absolutely. Sit down. On ze ground, please. Backs against ze railing.”

With no way of resisting, Justine did as he said. Berenice hesitated a bit longer, but she nodded at her to follow, and soon the topwoman had securely tied their wrists to the railing’s posts. “What next?” Justine spat. “Are you going to gag us, too?”

“I don’t think zat vill be necessary. Sailor, keep an eye on them.”

“Aye, aye, ser knight.”

Without another word – but with what might have been a brief expression of pity on his face – Dankrad turned to leave.

“I can’t believe it,” Berenice murmured next to her. “This is mutiny. They can’t be … they can’t be serious …”

Justine stretched her neck, tried to wriggle in her bonds a little to test them. There was almost no play; the topwoman had done her usual good work. “I think it’s fair to say that they are, unless this is some sort of kinky foreplay,” she drawled. “Now I’m not an expert on those matters …” She trailed off. “Sorry. Bad time for jokes.”

“Damn right, captain. Where’s Morgan when you need him?”

“Good question. You’d think the bastards would move already have moved on him. That monster of a sword of his could do some serious damage before they take him down, if he decides to use it.”

Berenice swallowed. “Somehow, I was hoping we’d all get out of this just fine.”

“Oh, not all of us. Not all of us. I’ve got things in mind for those traitors.”

“Right. … Captain?”

“What is it, sister?”

“Do you think … if you’d known this would happen, would you have made a different decision?”

Justine leant back against the railing and closed her eyes. No, she would have clapped Darmond in irons when she still had the chance. “One of the nicer things about being a captain, sister, is that you never need to answer questions like these.”

She could feel Berenice fidgeting next to her. “I see. Because … I’m not sure I would have.”

“Can’t say I blame you.” She glanced over at the main topwoman, who was pacing up and down the poop deck, holding an axe in her hand. Try as she might, she couldn’t actually remember her name. She was facing away from them, and only protected by a helmet and a knee-length gambeson, but even if they had not been bound to the railing, neither of them were armed. The best she could possibly do was kick at her, and the topwoman was taking care not to come too close.

Several minutes passed like that. Finally, Darmond and Dankrad hurried past them onto the poop deck. “We’re wasting too much time,” her one-time sailing master declared, as the topwoman joined them. “I want us to be gone from here before daybreak.”

“Ve don’t have a full complement. It should take us longer zan usual to prepare the ship.”

“I understand. Serah Jehan, can you work around it?”

Ah, yes, Jehan, that was her name. Darmond always did know these things. The topwoman was shifting with evident discomfort. “Not effectively,” she judged. “We only have my main mast hands and perhaps half of the mizzen men. Maker knows how many full benches of rowers we can rely on, but we’ll need to reorganise them to match starboard and port oars. It’d take us at least an hour just to get the ship ready for departure, and that’s if we don’t leave anyone to guard the prisoners.”

Darmond nodded sharply. “Make them an offer. Any hand who wishes to go back to work and swears on the Chant to make no attempts to free the captain, let them. Sit them with your own people to make sure they don’t conspire against us.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

The topwoman left the poop deck. “What about you, Dankrad?”

“Ve are not combat-ready, if zat is what you mean. My crossbowmen are ready, but …” He shook his head. “Morgan’s marines. Ve cannot trust zem. I would strongly advise against engaging in battle.”

“Noted. What about Morgan himself?” At that, Justine’s ears perked up. She knew she would be able to count on the Fereldan when it came down to it. If the mutineers had not yet gotten him under control …

“I told you ve should have taken him into custody together with ze captain. Ve’re lucky you thought to take sister Berenice; but Morgan alone is bad enough.”

Darmond spun around. “These are our fellow knights, Dankrad,” he scolded, tapping against his chest. “We may have been forced to take this ship, but the captain’s mistake do not absolve us from those bonds. The crew needed to see the captain restrained, so we had to take her captive and bring her on deck, but I would have preferred simply to place Berenice and Morgan under lock-up. Seizing Morgan like a common criminal would dishonour our oaths, and you will do no such thing.”

“Zey vill not show you ze same respect,” Dankrad pointed out. “Honour or not, if ve do not take everyone into custody, ve’ll be in deep trouble.”

“Noted, but my decision is made. Have your men assist in manning the oars, if they can. Dismissed.”

With a nod, Dankrad returned to work, leaving them alone with Darmond on the poop deck. He glanced over to them. “Sister Berenice, would you prefer to go below?”

She spat for a reply.

“Very well. I would like you to believe me when I say that this gives me no pleasure.” He went down on one knee across from them. “Captain, listen to me. We need to make for Val Royeaux, but we don’t have the manpower for good speed. If you were to order your people to stand down …”

Justine couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Really? Just like that? Tell me, snake, why on earth would I do that?”

“Because once we arrive in Val Royeaux, I will be imprisoned and charged as a mutineer, and you placed back in command of your ship. I believe that my cause is just, and I am inclined to believe a tribunal will find for me, but you must think the same in reverse, or you would not have acted as you did. The sooner we return to Val Royeaux, you – pardon the expression, captain – must believe, the sooner this will all be over.

She scoffed. “How like a traitor to seek recourse from courts and lawyers. How about we settle this right here? You versus me, longswords and armour, here, on the poop deck?” There was no reply. “No, I thought not. A decent man would have accepted, but you’ve made it clear that you’re neither.”

Darmond frowned. “That was uncalled for, captain. As you will, then, we’ll just have to continue sailing south at a snail’s speed. Berenice, if you prefer I will be happy to release yourself and Ser Morgan to the templar garrison on Llomerryn, but I’m afraid the captain will have to accompany us to Val Royeaux.”

“I’m going nowhere without the captain.”

“Then I am sorry to hear that.” He waved towards two of the crossbowmen keeping an eye over the rowers’ benches just a few feet away. “You two, please untie Ser Berenice and escort her to her quarters – gently. I have no intention of humiliating you further by making you spend the day tied up her in nothing but a nightgown.”

“If you’re so concerned about my dignity, give me back my sword!”

“Not until we’re well clear of these waters, I’m sorry.” Berenice was untied and raised to her feet. She struggled a bit, but eventually had to submit as she was led below.

“Are you that afraid, Curtis?” Justine asked Darmond, following her sister’s departure with her eyes. “So afraid of death that you won’t even grant a knight her sword?”

“Call me a coward if you wish, captain,” the traitor replied without batting an eye. “I prefer ‘sensible’. I intend to fulfil our orders, one way or the other.”

“What do you hope to gain from this, then? Do you honestly believe this will bring you the Divine’s favour? You’ll hang for this, Curtis. Trust me on that.” Darmond did not reply. The way he stood there, hands behind his back in a plain brown doublet that shone slightly in the light of the lanterns, he looked like a bit of a bronze statue. “Why are you doing this? I would have made you great. A captain, a commander of a major castle ... perhaps even admiral, one day. Why would you throw all that away?” Again, there was no reply. “Suit yourself. It’s the block for you.”

“We’ll see. Get some sleep, captain.”

By the time the mutineers had organised enough to hoist all sails despite their lack of hands, it was almost dawning. The lanterns were extinguished. Justine remained where she was; tied to the railing, wrapped in Darmond’s cloak. Morgan still hadn’t shown by the time she murmured the first couple of lines of her matins prayers to herself, before giving up. There was no point. Every now and then, Sister Lydia, Dankrad or Darmond walked past her, but none paid her any mind, and she would not give them the satisfaction of hurling invective at them.

Dawn came, and with all three of the _Amalthea_ ’s large white lateen sails raised, Darmond bade the anchor be raised and took the helm. She glanced upwards, toward the long red pennant flying from the main mast; and reckoned a good north-westerly breeze. Had their journey not been interrupted, they might have passed Santa Alizia around noon. As it was, the Amalthea slowly came to move. Only about half of the benches were filled, with many of the rowers assembled on the foredeck, and the mutineers had rearranged those who remained so that both sides of the ship were about evenly matched. Still, from the looks of things many of the oarsmen were still adjusting to their new benchmates, so that several oars clattered against each other on every stroke. Still, they executed a good about turn at decent speed.

The noise, however, must have awoken more than just her irritation. Adjusting the broad belt over his brigandine that held his claymore, Ser Morgan emerged from the hold, stumbled up the steps, and yawned generously. Half-obscured by the Fereldan knight’s massive body, behind him followed Cavalcanti, dressed in a fur-lined gown and hat as if he intended to spend the day disputing in the market place or speaking in assembly. It was the mage who first noticed something was wrong, but Morgan was first to speak. “Alright, what have we here then?”

Darmond and Sister Lydia hurried to meet them. “We have restored this ship to its original mission,” the priestess proclaimed, “No one has been harmed, and we’d like to keep it that way.”

“What the …” Morgan’s gaze fell on Justine, and he roared. “What are you _doing?_ Have you no shame? This is mutiny!”

“Calm down, brother, let us talk about this …”

“Talk about this? I think you’ve moved this well past talking!” His hand went to his sword, and Darmond and Sister Lydia jumped backwards to get out of range as he drew it. On any other man, Justine would scarcely have believed it possible to wield a claymore that size with just one hand, but in Morgan’s hand the weapon proscribed a wide flourish as easily as the lightest arming sword. Then, he placed his other hand around the hilt and rapidly swung it back beside his extended right leg to transition into a tail guard. “So?” he roared, glancing around, “Not so bold now, are you? Don’t have the stomach for an honest fight, eh? I’m not asleep, and I’m not unarmed! Come on!”

Darmond drew his sword. “Don’t do something you’ll regret, Morgan …”

“H-hold on!” Cavalcanti emerged from behind him, his arms raised in defence. Carefully walking around the irate Fereldan, he approached Sister Lydia and Darmond. “Now, sers, let us not be unreasonable here – oh! There’ll be no need for fighting.”

“Stay out of this, messer mage. We intend to bring you to Val Royeaux as per the Divine’s orders, so please step aside …”

Cavalcanti crossed his arms. “Not. So. Fast.” He stepped forward – into sword range, Justine noticed with newfound respect – and stared Darmond straight in the eyes. “You will release the captain and return control of this vessel to her. Now.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do it now!” In a dramatic gesture, he reached out his arm towards him, fingers spread. “Do it, or I shall … incinerate you! Or, rather …” he turned slightly, a demonic grin on his haggard face. “Or perhaps rather the Sister? Yes, I think that should do nicely.” Incinerate her? Maker have mercy, the man was bluffing. Justine had to keep herself from shaking her head in disbelief. Cavalcanti might be able to talk pretty, but she could not imagine him as even a remotely competent liar.

“You wouldn’t do that,” Darmond evenly responded. “Templars are trained to fight mages, you know that.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I count only two of you: yourself and Ser Dankrad. Besides …” Cavalcanti took a deep breath. “I don’t think you’ve taken your lyrium. Have you?”

Justine would not be able to tell who, if anyone, was more surprised by the mage’s words: Darmond, who flinched and cast a surreptitious glance in the direction of Dankrad, Morgan, whose guard slipped for a moment as his eyes went wide and his beard seemed to quaver on his face, Sister Lydia, whose mouth had fallen open, or herself. What on earth was he thinking? She had explicitly told him not to pass this knowledge on to anyone – and besides Sister Lydia, there must have been at least two dozen others close enough to hear it. Maker’s mercy, _what_ was he thinking?

For a few moments, no one said a word, or even moved. Darmond’s eyes went from Cavalcanti’s outspread fingers to his face and back again, no doubt calculating whether he could take the mage. Justine knew perfectly well that he would be, but she suspected Darmond had no idea of the mage’s true capabilities. _He_ hadn’t served long at the Circles, either, and knew scarcely more about mages than herself. No doubt, he was replaying in his mind the handful of occasions when they’d had to either fight mages or seen the destruction they had wrought – like that one, nameless village on the coast of Gwaren, where they’d arrived too late to prevent an abomination slaughtering all the inhabitants. If that was what a possessed mage could do, lashing out at anyone around, then how much damage could a fully conscious one do to a ship and its crew?

Darmond must have drawn the same conclusions, for he slowly took a step back and sheathed his sword. “Very well. I shan’t endanger the integrity of the _Amalthea_ , or the lives of its crew.” He sighed. “Stand down, every...”

Morgan was on him before he could even finish his sentence, wrestling him to the ground and disarming him. Dankrad hurried to his side, several of the crossbowmen jumped … “Hold! Hold, I say!” They froze at Darmond’s command. “Dankrad, give him your sword. Everyone, stand down.”

“Wise,” Morgan growled, rising to his feet. Hesitantly, Dankrad undid his sword belt and handed it to the Fereldan. “Messer mage, take my knife and untie the captain.”

With Morgan holding three swords in his hand, Cavalcanti had to reach around the knight and remove the rondel dagger from his plate himself. Then, he hurried over to Justine and knelt beside her. “Were you harmed, captain?” he quietly asked, pushing her aside so he could examine her bindings.

“Only my pride. I have to say, messer, that was an impressive bluff. I didn’t think he’d swallow it.”

“Yes, well, I clearly missed my calling as a cards player. There, try wriggling your wrists a little.”

She did so, and felt the rope around them come loose. One quick cut later, she was free and rubbing her wrists to calm her irritated skin. “Thank you. Ser Morgan, if you could spare a sword.” The belt he handed her was too large for her, so she didn’t even bother attempting to put it on over Darmond’s cloak before drawing it. “Escort these traitors below,” she ordered. “Lock them in a cabin and free Ser Berenice while you’re at it. Then have your marines arm themselves. I’m not losing control of this ship again.” She glanced down her body. “Actually, I’ll come with you belowdecks. I need to get dressed. After you, gentlemen.”

She watched as Morgan led his prisoners belowdecks. Dankrad and Sister Lydia did not return her gaze. Darmond did. “You lost,” she told him. “It’s the end of the line for you.”

“True.” A faint smile appeared on his face. “And you know what? I did the right thing. And I’d do it again.”

“But you won’t. I’ll make sure of that.” She waved for them to move on. “Take him from my sight.”

Not long after, she returned above, now wearing blue hosen, boots, a green arming doublet, and a red and green gown – and, of course, her sword. She had debated whether to take a brigandine and a mail shirt from the ship’s stores, just to be sure, but eventually decided that, considering they might still engage the Qunari later that day, she’d go for the arming doublet she wore under her plate so she’d be able to armour up more quickly.

Morgan, Cavalcanti, and Berenice met her on the poop deck. The latter greeted her with a hug, which Justine endured without protest before taking the helm. “Oh, thank Andraste you’re alright! I was so worried when I heard the fighting.”

“It was hardly even a scuffle … what’s important is that we’ve regained control of the _Amalthea._ ”

“Not entirely, captain,” Cavalcanti pointed out. “The way I understand it … too many of your crew are mutineers. Too many to properly operate this vessel, is that right?”

Justine crossed her arms. He wasn’t wrong. “We’re not dead in the water, if that’s what you mean. But yes, we cannot possibly take the ship into combat with nearly half our crew under lock.”

“Then correct me if I’m wrong, captain, but it seems to me our only option is to put the mutineers back to work.”

“Out of the question!” Berenice shot back. “What’s next, giving them all weapons? They’ve already proven they can’t be trusted. Captain, we should turn back to Llomerryn; hand over the mutineers, and hire what additional hands we need.”

“Not really an option,” Morgan intervened, dampening the clerk’s enthusiasm. “We’d need to take on at least fifty new hands, including highly-trained rowers. What with the war going on, we’d be lucky to find fifty layabouts, let alone the people we need.”

Frowning, Justine took a few steps around the poop deck, pacing more than aught else. Finally, she was forced to agree. “You’re right, of course. I have to agree with Berenice, though, we can’t trust those traitors to work alongside our men.”

“It may well be our only option, the mage is right about that. We’re less than a day’s journey away from Santa Alizia, after all – these are almost enemy waters. We’re not combat-ready, captain. Suppose we returned their arms to them – under a promise of good faith …”

“Morgan, I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you …” She sighed. “You’re right. Maker damn it, you’re right. Have the men return to their posts and resume normal operations. But I want you to have your marines watch them. Station one at the bow, one amidships, and a third at the end of the rowing deck at all times.”

“Aye, captain. What about our artillery company? I know you don’t want to hear it, but they need an officer.”

She scoffed. “And put Dankrad back in command?”

“In my opinion, it’s the only option. And … let’s be honest here. We need a helmsman, too. None of us can do it, especially not to standards, and you can’t do it _and_ command the ship.”

“Yeah, okay, is there anything else you want me to do? A Qunari officer, perhaps? Should we just hand over command to the traitors when they ask?”

“Captain, please,” Cavalcanti intervened. “It does seem to be our best option. You don’t need to arm them, right? Have them confined to their cabins when they’re not working, and keep an eye on them the rest of the time.”

She sighed. “Oh, for the love of … Berenice, you’re with me on this, right?”

“Well …” There was some fidgeting. “I don’t like it either, captain, but it does seem like the best option. I promise I’ll take personal charge of them and their swords.”

“Alright. Alright, fuck it. Darmond and Dankrad can go back on active duty, but so long as Sister Lydia is not essential to the operation of this ship, she stays in her cabin. And that is an order. As for the others … if either of them even _talks_ to the crew, I want to know about it. If either of them even goes _near_ the weapons stores …”

“You have our word, captain. We’ll keep them from doing any more harm.”

“Very well.” Her lips narrowed to a hard line, and she grabbed the pommel of her sword. “Morgan, you go tell them. I’m not going to waste my time talking to those worms.”

“At once.”

She turned to Berenice and Cavalcanti. "In the meantime, I want you two to do what you can to make this ship battle-ready.”

“You intend to proceed north, then, captain?”

“Well, I’m hardly going to give those bastards the satisfaction, now am I? We’ve still got good winds. If we get this ship back under oars, we should pass Santa Alizia by dusk. And then … well, there’s a good chance we’re gonna need all the hands we can get.”

“Aye, captain.”

The two knights and the mage went to work, leaving Justine alone on the poop deck. She looked after them for a moment, then grabbed the tiller tighter. She glanced up, the sails were filling up nicely.

Justine steered the _Blessed Amalthea_ out of the bay and due north. As predicted, they made good speed. After the night’s events, it seemed, the crew were too rattled to make trouble. Not long after, Morgan led Darmond to her. His sword and dagger had been removed, but he was not bound. “Captain,” he greeted her dispassionately.

She scowled. At the very least, he might have the decency to appear dejected. “The _Amalthea_ needs a helmsmen,” she explained without bothering with a preamble. “Unfortunately, that means I need you, at least for the moment.”

The other knight raised an eyebrow. “I see. Honestly, I’m surprised you would entrust me with the helm again. We both know you could do it yourself, and there are a couple of people in the crew who could sail the ship as well.”

“None with your experience, and I expect to be busy. You will take us north, and prepare yourself for combat.”

He sighed, shook his head. “Of course. Maker, wasn’t tonight enough? Half of your crew don’t want to go on. They’re afraid, or tired, or they just want to fulfil the Divine’s command. Two of your knights are out of commission, and you can’t rely on your helmsmen or your artillery company. How do you intend to go into battle like that, and against the Qunari at that?”

“The men will hold,” she insisted. She wasn’t quite sure if her voice sounded as stiff as she thought it did. “They will hold, or they will die. They know that. The question is, do you know it?”

“I am a knight templar. I’ve said it before – I will not endanger this ship or its crew. I’m no coward. Say the word, and I will fight, sister.”

“Don’t you dare call me that. You betrayed the order, your vows, and you betrayed me.” She turned away. “Take the helm. That is an order, if you still know how to follow them.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Without another word, or even a glance, she walked off the poop deck. Ser Berenice was waiting for her on the walkway at the foot of the main mast, rowers working hard on either side of them. Justine pulled her close so they would not be overheard. “Thoughts?”

“Not many. It’s a fucked-up situation either way. What did Curtis say to you?”

Her scowl deepened. “That he’d fight the Qunari with us, if I told him to.”

“He’s trying to save his own hide.”

“Possibly. Possibly not. Either way …” She broke off, tapped her foot against the deck planks. “He’s not wrong. We need the men, and we need knights; the more, the better.”

“Captain, you can’t possibly …”

Berenice was interrupted by a shout from the top.[1] “Sails dead ahead!” She glanced up at the lookout, then followed the direction he was pointing. She could scarcely make out a thing, even after moving to the foredeck.

“You up there, what do you see? Report!”

“One … two lateen sails, no oars. Maybe three leagues ahead!”[2]

Berenice gave Justine a cool look. “Suppose they make about 3 knots in this wind – that’s about an hour at full speed for us to catch up. Shall I give orders to pursue? It might well be an enemy vessel.”

“Hold one moment. Lookout, do you see anything else? Are they flying a banner?”

“No, ser! I can’t make out any details, but it looks like there’s some sort of symbol painted on the sails. They’re fat and slow, like a merchantman!”

She frowned. “A merchantman, this close to Santa Alizia without an escort? Andrastian ships wouldn’t dare. A Qunari, though …”

A faint grin appeared on Berenice’s face. “Sounds like a juicy target to me. Just imagine what they might be carrying. We’re still almost four hours to the island, which means they’re far away from reinforcements.”

“Agreed. Give orders to pursue, at top speed. Don’t spare our rowers, get in gear, and have arms and armour distributed.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Justine turned to leave, but Berenice reached out to grab her arm. “Wait. What about Dankrad and Darmond? We’ll need them on deck once we catch up to the oxmen, one way or the other. Shall I have them gear up, too?”

She hesitated. They wouldn’t need them against a mere merchantman, she was certain. On the other hand, even a stray arrow aimed at a helmsman could leave them in a good spot of trouble. “Alright. Get them in armour and return their swords to them. But I want you to take them back the instant we’re out of combat. And Dankrad is _not_ getting his war hammer; he’s as like to use it on me as on the enemy.”

“Understood, captain. You should go, get in gear. I’ll inform you if anything should change.”

Justine nodded at her knight. She’d always been appreciative of her countrywoman as a ship’s clerk, but it was becoming increasingly clear that she was ready to take on greater responsibility. It would be a shame to lose her, and she did not have the skill or experience to make a good sailing master, but maybe as a personal secretary – or even a subaltern prefect – once she was made commodore?

Humming slightly to herself, she went below. Only then did she realise that, by having her captain get in armour first, Berenice had cleverly arranged for herself to spend the least amount necessary encased in steel; no small boon considering it was a warm day and going towards noon. Still, she’d rather drown in sweat than blood.

She had laid out the pieces of her armour in her cabin, piece by piece in the order she would have to put them on. After putting away her sword belt and removing the gown she was wearing above her arming doublet, she reached for the first pieces: a pair of laminated steel sabatons, which she tied over the tip of her shoes. Next, the leg-harness: greaves sculpted to her shins, and another pair for her thighs, connected by straps, lacing and elegantly-flared poleyns. She slipped the heavy, closely-fitted mail shirt over her doublet, so that it protected her from mid-thigh to just below her elbows, and the mail pixane around her neck and shoulders. Then, she stepped out of her cabin and knocked on the next door to find Morgan, himself in similar preparations, to have him help her with those pieces which she could not fasten herself.

He followed her back to her cabin and picked up her cuirass – one of the new models, with the breast and back plates connected by a hinge under the left arm, and a long flaring fauld for fighting on foot. Each time she saw this piece, Justine had to admit, she was torn between admiration and recoiling: on one hand, it was absolutely beautiful; fluted elegantly and treated with gold and acid for elaborate scrollwork along the plackart and shoulder holes. At the same time – she noticed once again when Morgan put it on her somewhat clumsily – its nearly globular shape tapered at the waist so strongly as to make her feel like a wasp. A wasp that, at the slightest movement, seemed to feel the links of her mail softly pressing into her skin through the padded doublet below. Her armourer had assured her that this was an illusion, and had termed the slight waist the latest trend from the battlefields of Ferelden, where it served to give the cuirass better fit. As she recalled, she had termed it a damned embuggerance and other impious words. This time, though, the cuirass seemed to fit perfectly fine.

Next, Morgan helped her with her arm harness, although she quickly found that he still had a spot of difficulty with figuring out just how the parts – the main piece connecting rerebrace, vambrace and couters, and the separate spaulders and besagews – fit together. Not for the first time, he apologetically explained that in Ferelden, armourers prepared to create arm harnesses all in one articulated piece, permanently connected to be put on all at once.[3] Finally, she slipped on a fashionable plaque belt over her hips, lavishly decorated with gilded enamel decorations: her family’s coat of arms, the flaming sword of the Templar Order, and illustrations of scenes from the Chant of Light, and affixed her longsword and rondel dagger to it. Finally, Justine stepped away, stretched her limbs and tried out some movements. The armour still fit well, although she was sweating badly underneath it in the stuffy hold of the ship.

She left her gauntlets and helmet aside for the moment, and walked over to assist Ser Morgan with his own armour. His was far less decorative, almost old-fashioned to her Orlesian standards. Still, it would be more than sufficient against a simple merchantman. He had opted for an old-fashioned great bascinet, a large helmet with an acutely pointed profile around the skull and visor, and a thick plate gorget. Justine had never been fond of those helmet, strong though they are; the gorget restricted movement of the head more than a simple bevor would, while the narrow eye slots and dotted breaths on the visor were both too small and too far removed from the wearer’s face to allow for much peripheral vision. Still, it suited Morgan, and she had to admit he cut an imposing figure in it. Albeit he occasionally clanged the pointed tip of his bascinet against the ceiling beams.

Finally, she knocked against his breastplate for good luck, then went to fetch her gauntlets, bevor and sallet, strapping the first two on and tying the third to a pin on her shoulder so it dangled off a string without getting in the way. She’d spend more than enough time encapsulated in steel later; for now, she’d take full vision and a bit of cooling air reaching her face instead.

She climbed back up on deck. While the fresh air up here was a relief, she knew perfectly well that by the time they closed with the enemy ship, the sunlight would have her boiling in her armour. The sacrifices she made not to end up as a human pincushion.

Darmond still had the tiller. With a sharp nod of her head, she dismissed him so he could put on his own armour, and he hurried below. She still wasn’t comfortable with this, Justine thought as she took the helm. Even with just a sword, the traitor would be able to puncture the weak points of her armour in the heat of battle, if he came at her from behind. … that sounded wrong and terrifying, and was probably in some way a breach of her vows. But there was no question to it; she’d need someone to watch her back if she was to fight side by side with the mutineers.

“Captain!” That was the lookout’s voice, almost drowned out by the splash of eight score oars as they dug into the waves and the groaning of wood. “You should see this!”

Ah, yes, she sighed to herself, the irremediable tradition of lookouts never giving their captain a straight answer. Someday, she’d really have to lay down some rules in that respect. As it was, however, she waved over one of the men-at-arms preparing for combat on the poop deck. “Hold her steady,” she told him, then made her way to the bow of the ship.

Almost immediately, she realised what the lookout had wanted to draw her attention to. Now, she could make out the enemy ship much more clearly. Its hull was a wide, bulging shape, and two large lateen sails were painted with a symbol she thought she recognised from childhood lessons as that of the heathen Qunari. Something about it gave her pause, and she struggled to think of what, specifically.

“It doesn’t _look_ much like a merchantman, does it?” Justine flinched a little; she had been so focused on the ship ahead that she’d not noticed Morgan coming up next to her. In the shade of his bascinet’s raised faceplate, she could make out heavy drops of sweat glistening on his brow and in his moustache. “She’s rather light in the water.”

Ah, yes, that was it. “Maybe they’re returning from Llomerryn and have already sold their cargo.”

“And not bought anything in return? We both know the oxmen don’t trade with our people except to get those things they do not produce themselves. Something’s fishy about this.”

Berenice joined them. She had also put on armour, in the Antivan style with unprotected shoulders, and beside her sword was weighing a large steel mace in her hands. “It’s a troop transport!” she exclaimed, surprised. “Look, how light she lies in the water. You cannot pack soldiers as tightly as merchandise, especially if they also have their mounts with them. Add to that victuals, water, gear …”

Justine clenched her teeth. So much for easy prey. “You’re right,” she concluded after another look. “This might be tougher than we expected. We’ll definitely need Dankrad’s arbalests now.”

“They might not cut it.”

She sighed. “I know, I know. Alright, free Sister Lydia. Not you, Berenice, I want you to help me prepare.”

Justine led her back below, to her cabin, and unlocked the strongbox above the bunk. With such care as she might have applied to an unhatched egg or a pane of Serault glass, she took out the small wooden chest with the padlock on it. Next, she retrieved a matching key from the very bottom of her chest of clothes, and used it to unlock it.

The inside of the lid was decorated with a pokerwork miniature of Our Lady of the Sword. Beneath it, on a bed of straw and soft purple velvet, lay a curious collection of glass and clay vials, tools, and flasks. “Prepare … prepare six doses.”

Berenice furled her brow, did a quick count. “Six, captain? There are only five of us, and that’s assuming we let the traitors drink.”

“You let me worry about that.”

The knight looked up at her, worry plain in her eyes. “Captain, if you’re thinking about taking more than one dose …”

Justine sighed, walked over to the door. Her armour clattered slightly under her heavy, irritated steps. “Alright. Alright. The sixth dose is for Cavalcanti – no, don’t even say a word! I don’t want to hear it. We need all the advantages we can get.”

“Maker,” Berenice murmured, closing her mouth again. “Morgan mentioned something about how he bluffed the mutineers into surrendering by asking if they’d taken any lyrium. Is that how he knew about that? Did you tell him?”

She stiffened up, straightened her best as best one could in full plate. “Just prepare the lyrium. If anything should go wrong …” She trailed off. Dammit, what on earth was she thinking? This was reckless, at the very least. Heresy, at worst. “If anything should go wrong, it’s all on my head.” Justine paused. Neither woman moved. “I’ll summon the others. And the sister, too.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Not long after, the five knights of the _Amalthea_ , her chaplain, and the mage Messer Marsilio Cavalcanti were huddled together in the tiny cabin. All of the knights were in full armour, only adding to the problem. “What’s he doing here?” Morgan exclaimed, shocked by the sight of Cavalcanti closely pressed against the wall, his head bowed beneath the low ceiling.

“Messer Cavalcanti is here at my request. He will partake of the lyrium, and I will have no debate about that. No debate, I said!” She raised her voice to cut through the murmuring. “Sister Lydia, bless the lyrium.”

The priestess pushed her way to the front. Her eyes were wide; whether with fear, she could not tell.  “Captain, I must …”

“Do it! That is an order. Comply, or I will have you returned to your cabin again.”

Sister Lydia sighed. Then, she raised the hood of her habit over her head, took the tablet with the six prepared vials of bright blue liquid in her hands, and raised them as high as the low ceiling permitted. “Oh Creator, hear our cry. In their hour of need, your faithful servants, these brothers and sisters of the sword, humbly beseech you to bless these vials with your infinite grace. Grant them strength, oh Maker, and protect them in your might. For they are your knights, pious and true, and their sword is your sword. Thus, we praise your name.”

“Praise be to the Maker,” the knights murmured.

Then, Sister Lydia set down the tablet. Justine stepped forward. She removed her right gauntlet, picked up one of the vials at random, opened it and held it to her mouth. Queer, salty vapours rose from the mouth of the vial, prickling the inside of her nose. “Thus, we serve,” she murmured, threw back her head and swallowed the contents of the vial in one quick swig.

Almost instantly, she felt a change coming over her, body and mind. Felt her throat burning as though she had swallowed a thistle whole, and for a moment her vision blackened. When it returned, all she saw appeared somewhat washed-out, colourless, but so much sharper. Even in the faint candlelight, she could make out the individual links of Dankrad’s mail collar, and the sweat drops on Cavalcanti’s pallid brow, and even the individual threads on the frayed edge of Lydia’s hood. She felt her fingers twitch involuntarily, almost dropped the vial. Felt the blood rushing through her veins and her muscles relaxing … she barely noticed Morgan and Darmond taking their vials, and only snapped out of her rush when Berenice gentle took the empty vial from her hand. There was no judgement in her eyes. All templars knew what the lyrium did to you.

Breathing hard, Justine glanced over at Cavalcanti. “Messer mage, you go next.”

“I … what?” He had watched her throughout the initial rush, she knew, and he had already appeared rattled upon entering the room. She couldn’t blame him, the whole scene had something of a nefarious conspiracy or a heathen ritual to it.

“We _will_ need your expertise. There is no way around it. Drink.”

Her glare must have brooked no resistance, for the mage hesitantly stepped forward and took one of the vials. “Captain, I must …”

“Drink.”

He drank.

Justine’s hand went to her dagger as she watched the mage. With the room as crowded as it was, she wouldn’t even be able to draw her sword – not that, if the worst came to pass, her dagger would do her much good, either. And yet ...

The mage drank, shivered, reached for the wall to support himself. Then, he straightened his back and gave a slight cough. “My, but that _is_ quite intense …”

“How are you feeling, messer?” Morgan warily asked.

Another shiver went down the mage’s body, he looked at his hands. “I’m … I’m alright,” he murmured. “Actually, I’m feeling pretty good. Like a young Darinius, in point of fact.”

Justine furled her brow. She was pretty sure she’d never heard that name before. “That’s a … good thing?”

“I should certainly think so!” He stretched – as well as anyone could have when wedged between armoured knights in a room too small to hold even them – and wiggled his fingers. A faint spark of magic danced between their tips, so faint that Justine would not have noticed it if not for the lyrium.

She gave a sharp nod. “Very well. Everyone else, take your lyrium, then get back on deck. We’ll be closing with the enemy any moment now.” Justine left them behind in the chamber and hurried back up the stairs. To her delight, the wind that hit her face – tickling her skin and letting her feel every strand of her hair, under the effect of the lyrium – came from the east, rather than almost straight from the south as it had before. As an oared vessel, the _Amalthea_ would lose less speed than their target, and they would catch up sooner. At a glance, the crewman she entrusted with the helm seemed to be handling things alright, so she walked over to the foredeck were the marines were assembling and making last checks of each other’s armour. “How’s everyone feeling up here?”

There were some muted cheers, and the marines’ lieutenant was beaming at her from underneath her raised sallet. “We’re ready to give those oxen what they’ve got coming, ser, just say the word! Standard approach and boarding, captain?”

“That’s the plan. Keep your visors down and your shields up, then we go alongside. Watch yourselves – from the looks of it, they’ve a bit more freeboard than we do, so we’ll need to climb uphill. Think we can do this?” Cheers and rattling weapons were her answer. “I’m not getting a lot of enthusiasm here!” This time, the oarsmen around joined in, rattling the shafts of the axes and swords they had been issued against their oars, and the noise was near deafening. She grinned and put on her sallet, visor up and bevor down, for now. “Let’s go get ‘em!”

The cheering followed her as she walked back down the walkway, where ship’s hands had already taken down two masts – now stored with their yardarms and sails underneath the walkway, between the rowers’ benches – and were just handling the third. The _Blessed Amalthea_ was now entirely under oars, and even with the carefully measured, slow strokes of the rowers, they were quickly gaining ground on the enemy ship.

Justine halted at the edge of the poop deck, just in front of the velvet canopy showing her family’s coat of arms, looked out straight ahead along the length of her ship. Her hand rested on the hilt of her longsword. The other knights, Messer Cavalcanti, and Sister Lydia joined her not long after. Even the latter two had equipped themselves with gambesons, brigandines and helmets from the ship’s stores, no doubt a sensible precaution no matter how preposterous they looked over their civilian robes. “Ready, everyone?” she asked again once her knights – traitors included – had assembled alongside her.

“As ready as we’ll ever be.” Morgan exclaimed, fingering his claymore.

“Excellent. Darmond, take the helm. Bring us in close.”

“Aye, captain. All hands – ready for battle!” The rowers picked up speed, and Darmond made a small course alteration. Already, they could plainly see the stringers on the hull of the Qunari transport, the lines of its rigging and the glistening horns and weapons of the oxmen assembling on its deck. With a swerve, the _Amalthea_ moved to overtake the enemy on their starboard side, so that both their ship and the winds were driving them towards the shore rather than towards the safe haven of Santa Alizia. Justine did not expect it would take that long – even if it had for some reason been impossible to attack and board the enemy, the _Amalthea’s_ rowers would not be able to keep up such speeds for long – but it was good practise nevertheless.

“Going into longbow range now,” Berenice suggested, lowering her visor with the head of her mace. There was a shuffle as the other knights did likewise. Justine also raised her bevor and her vision contracted to a thin, wide slot. She could still make out Berenice and Dankrad on either side of her, but up and down were but slabs of darkness.

Still, it was more than sufficient to watch as they came closer and closer to the enemy ship, now on a diagonal intercept course. The Qunari made no attempt to evade or even deviate from their own course, but it didn’t take long until the first shower of arrows went down on them. Most fell short and plunged useless into the water, but a few bored deep into the railing of the _Amalthea._ There weren’t very many of them. “Fifteen archers, maybe,” Justine suggested. Already, the lining of her bevor was damp from her breath. There was another volley. This time, several hit the deck. One harmlessly broke on Morgan’s helmet, though not without sending him stumbling from the force, while another got an unfortunate rower in the arm and a third ruined the poop deck canopy. With a wave of her hand, she ordered the wounded man to be taken below and taken care of, then turned to Dankrad. “Take command of the arbalests. Return fire when able.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

And all the while, they were getting closer to the enemy. By now, even the bare eye could easily determine that the Amalthea was going to crash into the starboard bow of the Qunari vessel, rendering both ships immobile and allowing them to be boarded. Their prey was, indeed, a foot or two higher at the deck than the _Amalthea_ , but she did not have any sort of forecastle. Still, it would restrict the arbalists to indirect fire, while fully exposing them and making boarding considerably more arduous. Still, they had one advantage. “Messer Cavalcanti! Suggestions?”

“Ah … I told you, I’m no battlemage …”

“If you’re telling me I gave up the secrets of my order for nought, I shall be very unhappy with you.”

“I’ll think of something, I promise!”

“Good. Think quickly. Sister Lydia, now would be the time.”

The sister cleared her throat and began to sing. Slowly, in a clean soprano, and with as much fervour as the humblest Chanter could offer. “ _Blessed are they who stand before / the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter …_ ”

A shout went up at the forecastle, drowning out the One Song. “Loose!” From this distance, Justine could not make out the individual crossbow bolts sent flying at Darmond’s command, but she did see them hitting their mark. The _Amalthea’s_ arbalists had aimed well: two of the indistinct Qunari figures amassing on the enemy ship’s deck clutched their wounds and disappeared from view behind the railing, which itself had not taken the bolts well: in one area amidships, the force of impact actually shattered the railing, sending splinters flying into the mass of soldiers behind it. Justine chuckled at the sight, pleased to see what must be the barbarians’ shoddy construction working against them.

In this manner they continued on their approach course, with the Qunari archers letting loose three volleys for every one their arbalists could loose, but in point of fact they suffered few losses. Though the enemy archers’ elevated position served them well in terms of protection, it also meant that most of their arrows uselessly rained down on helmets and pauldrons. One hit Justine’s breastplate, right over the sternum, yet barely made a dent in the steel. Their own crossbows, meanwhile, were not only hitting largely unarmoured grey flesh or simple wickerwork ‘armour’, but also boring deep into the wood of the enemy ship’s railing, sometimes injuring those behind them. And yet, for every one Qunari they killed or injured, another seemed to step up without so much as a flinch or hesitation.

Justine wasn’t entirely sure whether to admire the foolhardy stoicism of the oxmen or mock their mindless devotion to their grievous error. Either way, they were formidable opponents.

_“Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow …”_

“Steady!” The two ships were scarcely fifty yards apart, and the _Amalthea_ was still accelerating.

“We’re off a bit, Darmond,” she shouted – at their present heading, even a blind fool could see they would end up overshooting the Qunari vessel, leaving them vulnerable to be rammed by the enemy ship’s hardened bow amidships, where the _Amalthea’s_ structure was most vulnerable. “You must correct!”

The knight at the helm ignored her command. Instead, he shouted an order for the portside oarsmen to mount their oars a-wing – their usual position when the ship was under sail; with the handle resting on the deck and the blade aloft, giving the impression of a butterfly’s spread wings. “A-wing on port, I say!”

It took Justine just an instant what her sailing master intended. “Do as he says, now!”

Somewhat sluggishly, the portside oarsmen – drilled, trained professionals all, she had to remind herself, with many serjeants among their number – obeyed, and within seconds every oar on that side of the ship was raised high, out of the water. Their starboard counterparts, however, continued their regular strokes. The _Amalthea_ turned, sharp and tight to port –

_“In their blood, the Maker’s will is written …”_

A tremendous quake went through the _Amalthea’s_ body as both ships’ bows crashed together at full speed. Almost instinctively, Justine reached out for Berenice’s plated arm for stability, and nearly sent them both tumbling to the ground. Then, however, she gathered herself. The _Amalthea_ ’s bow had impacted against the enemy ship at a nigh-optimal angle and velocity, so that she was bored deep into the Qunari hull without having suffered much real damage herself. Locked into one another, both ships came to a trembling halt, the enemy’s deck at most a yard above the .

Justine took a deep breath. Another volley of crossbow bolts was let loose and found some purchase, then a return volley of longbow arrows pierced the brigandines of two – three? – of her rowers. She drew her sword. “Everyone,” she screamed as loudly as she could, “with me! _Montsalvat_ and _Andraste’s Sword,_ to glory!”

The marines took up her cry and climbed up to the deck of the enemy ship. Justine followed, almost at a run and her sword in both hands, up the walkway, into the throng of men-at-arms. Someone had produced a plank and laid it between the decks, It trembled under each running step of the heavily armoured soldiers, but it held, and soon Justine stood on the enemy deck. Almost immediately, she was tackled by a giant mound of grey flesh and a pair of horns. She was pushed back into the marines’, righted herself and raised her visor to improve her vision. Which one was the Qunari who had attacked her? She couldn’t tell, but there was another just a few feet away, dressed head-to-toe in that strange wickerwork armour of theirs and swinging a large battleaxe.

Justine darted at him, dodging under his backswing, and executed a haphazard thrust at the oxman’s shoulder. Far from hitting the bare hide of his armpit, Justine’s sword’s point only touched the large, painted wickerwork ailette. She expected it to pierce through the thin weaved strips of wood without any difficulty, but in fact her blade all but got caught between two layers, harmlessly deflected to the side. Justine tried to pull it out, only to find that the Qunari had brought his axe around as he sharply slammed its curved pommel against the side of her helmet … blinded by the shock, she stumbled backwards, just barely tearing free her sword; the oxman tried to follow up with his axe, missed, took a forward step, raised his weapon and got a mace smashed against his flank from behind. Almost instantly, his attack faltered, the mace having presumably crushed several ribs and possibly his lung, and Justine grabbed her sword halfway down the blade to apply the point to the Qunari’s unarmoured throat and end him rightly.

Her blade bloodied, she pushed the Qunari away from her and looked out for her saviour, just in time to see them under assault from another ox in heavy wickerwork plate, pressing them hard with his partisan. The marine kept up a good defence, grabbing the polearm by the shaft to keep it away from her armour’s weak points, and moving up its length to swing her mace against the ox’s legs; but surely did not notice the other Qunari, naked from the waist up except for colourful tattoos, approaching from her blind slot on her right flank, and Justine bolted to defend them – she did not make it in time, before the grey giant with the bare, painted chest had plunged a long dagger into the gap between their breastplate and left rerebrace, prompting a howl of pain from the marine. The Qunari grabbed them by the helmet, forced open their visor, and _pushed …_

All Justine could do was to return her second hand to the pommel of her longsword, yell, and charge, until she slammed into the half-naked Qunari with her sword plunged up his chest from the stomach, almost to the halfway point of the blade. She stepped back, looking over her shoulder to find the marine had slumped forward across the other Qunari’s partisan; Justine pulled with all her weight to dislodge her sword, then whirled around to slash at the spearman’s throat with some success.

Having gained a moment’s breather, she looked around Qunari ship’s foredeck. Already, she could at least make out three steel-armoured bodies sprawled out on the deck planks or slumped over the railing, but many more Qunari. On the other hand, the enemy also had the numbers advantage. The knights and men-at-arms had been joined by a handful of oarsmen to fill in the gaps; more would follow as their peers were clustered tightly on the _Amalthea’s_ foredeck, by the plank leading up to them, together with the arbalists, and constituting a juicy target for the Qunari archers further down the ship. There, that huge oxen with a two-handed sword and small red pauldrons was standing, supervising the battle but not participating. An officer?

Justine shifted her hands on her sword’s hilt, ready to charge, yelled _“Blessed are the Righteous! Montsal-“_

The deck shook under her as an explosion ripped through the ship. For a moment she was blinded and thrown back by its force, then she realised what it was: a fireball! It had torn through the Qunari vessel’s railing like cannon fire, and all of a sudden the aftward half of the deck was covered with flaming fragments of aetherial matter, setting fire to wood and men alike. Cavalcanti! She grinned into her bevor, pleased to find herself thus vindicated. Now, if only he could keep this up … a Qunari sword interrupted her thoughts; she deflected it with the flat of her blade, then followed up with a punch to the gut and her sword to his throat. Then, she returned her attention to the officer at the back. The fireball had thrown him to the ground, and flying shrapnel from the railing appeared to have wounded him. Several of the archers around him were dead, others on fire. She wouldn’t get a better chance.

Justine gestured with her offhand at some of the men-at-arms nearby. “You, you, and you! Cover me!” She couldn’t tell if they were following or had even heard her, but there was no time to worry about that. Her sword held low at her side, she charged, sprinting through the blood and gore and seawater now covering the deck. She broke through the enemy lines easily enough, protected by speed as much as her armour, tackled archers to the ground, and finally was upon the officer. He attempted to push himself back to his feet and was rewarded with a gauntleted punch to the face. Something cracked, probably his nose. Blindly, the Qunari’s massive hand reached for her face, she kicked it aside and knelt down on his shoulder to pin him down. His other hand swung at her but only hit her breastplate, and she finished by grabbing him by the horn and holding her sword to his throat. “Yield, cur!” she shouted at him. He growled something incomprehensible in their language. She raised her voice, although part of her was wondering why she thought that’d help him understand. “I’m taking you prisoner – my prisoner, understand?! Are you a gentleman?”

If he answered in any Andrastian tongue, she missed it as someone very heavy and very large stumbled backwards across her back, fell, and was immediately laid out by a descending mace head. Justine nearly collapsed under the weight, accidentally pushing her sword’s blade down deep into her prisoner’s throat. She shook off the Qunari across her back and managed to get to her feet, but not before the officer had gurgled something and spat a fair bit of bubbly red blood into her unprotected face. She yelled something nonverbal, stumbled backwards and laid her other hand on her sword’s hilt. It was then, only when she had been blinded by Qunari blood in her eyes, was she gripped by the panicked realisation that she had been paying next to no attention to her surroundings. Suddenly terrified, she swung her sword around more or less at random – it didn’t hit anything, thank the Maker. After several seconds of frantic blinking, her vision was beginning to clear, too, but …

Someone – or something – clasped her around the rerebrace. She whirled around, only to find it was Darmond. He had gathered an escort of a handful of rowers and a man-at-arms who were keeping his back clear of Qunari – now very clearly pushing back against their initial onslaught. She could scarcely hear Darmond’s words over the screams of the dying. “Captain! That fireball was Cavalcanti just now. He’s gone unconscious. I’m having someone carry him below, but we’re being pushed back. We need to fall back to the ship, mount a defence!” A mere glance around confirmed that he was right. While Darmond’s escort had enabled him to break through and was keeping several oxen at bay, what she saw through the increasingly voracious flames was that the enemy had made it all the way back to the ramp back to the _Amalthea_ ’s foredeck, and had the liberty of fighting downhill.

“You’re right,” she shouted back. “We need to fall them in the back, roll them up …”

“They outnumber us, three to one!” He glanced over his shoulder, then pointed vaguely behind him with the head of his war hammer. “Back to the ship!” he called. “We can make that jump!” Without hesitation, he dragged her over to where the first crossbow bolt has splintered the railing.

Justine looked across, already going queasy. Or maybe that was the Qunari blood dripping off her nose now. There wasn’t much of a height difference, although both ships were bobbing on the waves, but at this point they were at least five metres apart. Even assuming she’d make it in full armour, they’d land right on the rowers’ benches. And if she didn’t make it, well … she had only tried treading water in armour once, as part of her training at home, and even with her older sisters standing by to keep her from drowning, it wasn’t an experience she was keen to repeat. “Are you insane?” she shouted back at Darmond. “Is this another attempt to murder me?”

“I think if I were you, I’d rather try than be killed by those Qunari and lose the ship, as well! Let me try first, if I don’t make it, you can think of something better.”

He made for a running start, but she grabbed his vambrace. She was not entirely sure why. “Wait!” Their eyes met. She thought she should probably say something. “Uh, don’t die.”

“I’ll try.” She released his arm. Darmond took a deep breath, crouched down slightly, and launched into a sprint. After just a couple of steps, his feet left the deck and he went soaring through the air, flailing with his legs and arms as though he was still running on solid ground, his armour clattering … with a loud clang, Darmond impacted against the _Amalthea’s_ railing. It was only by chance that he had managed to hold on to the edge and, with the help of several nearby rowers, was raised up on deck. He shouted something at her that she could not make out, then reached out his arms.

Justine looked around; it was now or never. Just to her left, one of the rowers uttered a guttural scream, a Qunari blade sticking through his helmet’s eye slot. From the looks of it, none of his peers who had escorted Darmond through enemy lines would make it, either. Oh, for fuck’s sake … she broke into a run, a sprint, and before she knew it, she was clear of the deck, flailing through the air more like a stone than a dragon – for an instant, paralysing fear gripped Justine; the water surface beneath her, covered with floating corpses and wooden shrapnel, seemed so close, and she was certain she’d fall short and be dragged down into the deep by the weight of her armour –

The impact against the _Amalthea’s_ railing knocked the breath out of her lungs, hitting her like a sledgehammer even through her armour. All she could see for a moment were bright lights in the darkness. And then she felt herself falling …

Reflexively, her arms reached out, tried to grasp something – anything – to hold onto, but only reached smooth wood, a tiny little ledge that was far too small to support her armoured self, a stringer, perhaps … a pair of gauntleted hands caught her around her shoulder, then another pair of hand got hold of her other arm’s vambrace and a third clasped her around her breastplate. Gasping for air, she was pulled up over the railing and on board. Only once she was firmly seated on one of the rowers’ benches and someone handed her a canteen of warm water, and Justine lowered her bevor to drink, did she recognise that it had been Darmond. “Fuck you,” she murmured, in between eager sips. “What’s our situation?”

“We’re losing men, fast. We’re already down … Void, maybe 20, 30 people? We’re hitting back as best we can, of course, but most of our people are just oarsmen while theirs are trained soldiers. If we had another bit of magic like before …”

“What is Cavalcanti’s situation? Is he still unconscious?” She realised that Darmond had only been back on board the _Amalthea_ for a few seconds longer than herself, and waved dismissively. “Nevermind that. You – you there, go find Sister Lydia. Have her bring the Enchanter back on deck, even if it means she has to punch him awake. Now!”

She threw aside the empty canteen, then raised her bevor once more and rose to her feet. Only now, after taking a moment’s rest, did she truly notice she was boiling inside her armour. The lower layers of her gambeson, let alone the various liners of her helmet, were soaked with cold sweat. Besides, she needed to relieve herself.

Glancing over to where the Qunari were slowly, but certainly pushing down the ramp to clear a foothold for themselves to take over the _Amalthea_ , Justine tried to consider their options. As far as she knew, all of her knights were still alive and on the field while she had killed the one enemy officer she could identify. Logically, then, the enemy would be slow to react to a change in tactics. Already, Dankrad or rather a handful of his arbalists had grasped the opportunity, taking position on the walkway to fire on the enemy. Towering over her human crew as they did, and in addition being raised above them on the ramp and their own foredeck, made the Qunari attackers convenient targets; so that every few moments another bolt thinned their numbers. At the same time, however, the enemy made good use of their elevated position to rain down javelins on their enemies. There was not enough force behind them to puncture shields and do serious harm to her people, but since a shield with a yard-long javelin sticking out of it was all but useless, the oarsmen quickly abandoned their advantage.

They were losing, Justine realised.

She drew her sword again, now decided on a course of action. “Darmond,” she called. “Come, let’s find the others. Berenice, Morgan, Dankrad … and as many men-of-arms as we still have. I want to make a push. Let’s see how those brutes deal with a heavily-armoured, coordinated spear point. Move!”

This time, Justine did not utter a battle cry as she charged into the fry, but she did lower her visor. If things went as planned, the added protection would by far outweigh the reduced visibility. She found Morgan easily enough as she made her way forward through the throng of rowers defending their ship: he was in the front row, half-swording his claymore to madly thrust at the attackers. “Morgan, stand ready! We’ll try a push!”

“Music to my ears! Oh, just die already you ugly horned fuck, you motherless son of a shit-covered mountain goat …”

Taking inspiration from Morgan’s dulcet poetry, Justine lashed out with her sword at chest height, executing a broad slash aimed at the legs of the Qunari above her. Of course, two out of three were smart enough to keep their distance, but she sliced deep into the third javelin-thrower’s leg and possibly shattered his kneecap. He threw back his head and uttered a guttural cry of pain, before he was ended by the halberd of one of the rowers in the lines behind her. Now, all they had to do was get back up there and establish a foothold …

Darmond and Berenice appeared beside her. “Where’s Dankrad?” she shouted at them, once she could actually make out their shapes from the corner of her eye slot.

“Dead! We were just talking when he got a javelin to the face, and he had his visor up!”

Justine wasn’t wholly sure whether to laugh or cry. What an awful, ignominious way to go! There was no honour in a random death like that. “Tough luck. Then it’s down to the four of us – everyone, charge! _Montsalvat!_ ”

The other knights joined in, each with their own battle cry. “ _Dumhythe and Saint Cathaire!_ ” Morgan shouted, while Beatrice punned on her family name with the Orlesian “ _Je t’enterre!_ ” Darmond, meanwhile, merely declared himself “ _An Ostwicker!_ ” Either way, they charged as one – Morgan up front, up the ramp to sow confusion and clear the way for them to climb up to the Qunari ship’s deck without being intercepted. Even so, the instance they had righted themselves, the enemy was back upon them. “Stay close!” Justine shouted, “don’t let them flank you!”

Advise that turned out to be sorely necessary, as the first blows began to land on her. Outnumbered, and unprotected on her left flank, Justine found herself faced with not one but two Qunari, one with a sword and a small, square wickerwork shield; the other wielding a hammer. Both were armoured, and both looked none too reasonable. Hammer and Shield, for shorthand – why not?

Justine easily parried a couple of high thrusts from Shield, designed to try out her defences – meanwhile, to her left, the ox Hammer was biding his time, now and then feinting at her. She wished she had a shield, but as it was the best she could do was parry and dodge where necessary and attack where possible. With another opponent so close, she could not grapple with Shield without exposing herself. But she had some ideas about what else she could try.

When Shield thrust at her eye slot, she grasped the opportunity. With a cry, she darted away underneath the blade and to the left, clasped her left hand around her sword’s blade around the midpoint, and executed a jab at the bare flank of Hammer. She had no expectation of actually hitting; the thrust was well-telegraphed and the damned oxman had long twisted away when her blade met him, so that all it did was shave off some of the wickerwork breastplate’s top layer. Wounding him, however, had not been her intention: for now, Hammer was off-balance. His weapon was so close to hear that she could have grasped it by the shaft, possibly even disarming him, but an extended grappling match wasn’t a risk she could take with Shield closing in on her. Instead, she whirled around until her back was pressed almost against Hammer’s chest, bought herself some time by slamming the pommel of her sword backwards into his bare flank. Then, she darted forward, praying that her pommel-strike had debilitated Hammer long enough for her to execute her plan.

Shield raised his … shield, but she had no intention of charging into him. Instead, still running, she haphazardly swung her sword in the general vicinity of his leg. His sword parried, and she let the momentum carry her around until she was almost behind him. From there, it was a quick enough matter to bring her sword around and execute a savage upwards slash at his armpit. Shield dropped his sword, screamed as bright red blood frothed forth from the wound, insensibly stumbled towards his friend. Hammer carelessly pushed him aside and advanced at her. Justine, acutely aware that she had her back to enemy reinforcements scarcely a yard away, directly returned to the attack.

First, she thrust at the Qunari’s bare hands on his hammer. He deflected her sword easily, and with such force that it almost went flying out of her hands and yanked her arms from her shoulders. Hammer was grinning now, uttered a few words in that savage language of theirs. “Fuck you too, heathen,” she grunted back at him between heavy breaths, readjusting her guard. This time, she wasn’t fast enough: the Qunari brought his hammer around and slammed it right into her breastplate just below her right ribs. She didn’t have the breath to scream, but the war hammer crushed her plate, the mail underneath, and was barely softened by her arming doublet – a sharp pulse of pain ran through her body, numbing every sensation in her side – Justine was only vaguely conscious of the fact that the blow had probably damaged her internal organs. For now, however, there was no time to waste on pain …

With a muffled scream, she launched herself into the oxman, catching him in the midst of his backswing, and rammed her left shoulder into his stomach. It wouldn’t do any real damage, but it did throw him off-balance. At once, Justine reached the opportunity to blindly slash at his arms holding the hammer, while at the same time forming a fist with her left hand and slamming it up his chin. His skin burst under the impact of her gauntlet’s sharp-edged knuckles, but that was the least she would do. Never wear an open-faced helmet to a brawl. Before he had time to react, she brought her knee up between his legs, though the reaction she got was disappointing, then found the shaft of his hammer with her blade. Blindly slashing down the shaft, she found enough leverage to push it back – perhaps Hammer could have resisted and pushed back had she not at the same time drawn her dagger with her offhand and jabbed for his throat; but as it was he had to focus on avoiding that and let the hammer be levered from his hands. He did not give her the opportunity to exploit that advantage, whirling around and tightly gripping her sword arm and _twisting_ it so far she could feel the mail at her elbow joint straining. She could sense his leg between her feet, trying to set up some sort of throw and pushing her off-balance. If she landed on her back, she wouldn’t get back to her feet in time before the Qunari had retrieved his weapon. Without a further thought, Justine flipped the dagger over in her hand and stabbed at his face. The point glanced off his helmet, and for a moment Justine wished her bevor was down so she could at least bite him in the shoulder. Instead, she slightly adjusted and stabbed again, this time at Hammer’s throat and this time the point of the dagger at least pricked his skin.

On the other hand, he had succeeded in twisting her sword from her hand.

The Qunari dragged at her arm and bent over to throw her, but he hadn’t counted on the height difference. Rather than throw her over his shoulder, as he would have done with a fellow oxman, he awkwardly tried to drag her body up first. Thus, she had sufficient time to use her dagger arm to shift tactics and grab his helmet by the horns, pulling it back with all her weight until he groaned in pain. The Qunari’s grip on her other arm weakened enough for her to pull herself free and grab the other horn, so that she could use her left to cut the oxman’s throat.

He stumbled backwards and fell, burying her under his considerable weight. Groaning hard, Justine rolled him over, then got on her knees and reached for the sword she’d dropped. Then, she pushed herself back up on her feet, spat out some bloody phlegm, and charged right back into the fray.

She couldn’t say just how long the battle went on after that. Had someone asked her, she would have estimated ‘hours’, but by the time she slowly, mechanically pushed her sword down through a helmet’s eye slot, looked around and found no one else to kill, the sun still stood near its zenith. Breathing hard and supporting herself with her sword, she pushed herself up to her feet and raised her visor. She was still on the deck of the Qunari ship, now black with blood and gore. Walking over the bodies of the dead and dying, both humans and oxen, and dragging her sword by her side, she made her way up towards the bow.

A few of her people were still gathered around the deck, stripping the corpses, but no moving Qunari were in sight. By the shattered railing, near the ramp down to the _Amalthea_ , she found Berenice. The clerk was sitting on the deck in her armour, leant against the railing. She had removed her helmet and her right arm harness. Sister Lydia was kneeling next to her, unconcerned about the blood staining her white robes, and tending to Ser Berenice’s wound. They were quietly talking to each other, and Justine couldn’t help but chuckle. Or rather, cough up blood because chuckling wasn’t an option right now.

She walked past the other two women, leaving them to sort out their matters on their own, and walked down the ramp. Darmond met her on the _Amalthea’s_ bow. His breastplate was dented, one arm hung limp by his side. “How’re we doing, Curtis?” she asked him, surprised at how slurred and dull her own voice sounded.

A thin smile ran across Darmond’s battered face, but it faltered as soon as he spoke. “We’ve taken the enemy ship,” he quietly reported. “I’ve got some people still looking, but I don’t expect there are survivors still hiding. No prisoners.”

“Are the dead numbered?”

“Sers Darmond Markenbach and Morgan Bruich,” Curtis responded. Justine had to close her eyes. Morgan, Maker have mercy. She’d never thought … it hadn’t seemed possible that one would ever fall in battle. “None else of name … and of all other men, sixty-four.”

Half her crew. Too many to go on. Too many even to stay under oars, let alone fight … She looked around. They had taken no prisoners and no prize. But honour … she tried to focus on that. It felt nothing like she had thought it would. There was no cheering, no pageantry, no banners and no feasts in her honour. It hadn’t been worth it.

But they were alive. “The Maker fought with us, today,” she whispered. “Have … join me. We must do right by him. Let there be sung the Canticle of Exaltations. The dead with charity immolated with the enemy ship as their pyre. And then … to Llomerryn. And to Orlais, then.” She smiled. It did not touch her eyes. “Never was a mage brought there at greater cost.”

* * *

 

[1] Most Quattrocento and Cinquecento galleys had only one or two masts outfitted with large lateen sails, which were raised _on their yard-arms_ into position and only then unfurled. Galleys with three masts, like the _Amalthea_ , more properly fall into the category of galleasses, comparatively expensive, blown-up versions of the standard galley which served as powerful gun platforms after the introduction of gunpowder. At the famous Battle of Lepanto of 1571 for instance, one major factor in the victory of the Christian alliance were the six Venetian great galleasses placed in front of the main line of battle, and which allowed the Christians to mount near twice as many guns as the Ottoman fleet. Let it be noted, however, that a three-sailed galley, with slightly more draft, makes more sense than the traditional Mediterranean design in the conditions in which the _Amalthea_ is used: i.e., usage both within the interior seas of the Waking Sea and Rialto Bay, and the oceanic waters connecting them. The _Amalthea_ is not equipped with anti-ship gunpowder weaponry (as opposed to anti-personnel guns, which see limited use on some ships), as Thedosian powers have yet to solve the problem of mounting heavy cannons on a mobile wooden platform. Had the _Amalthea_ guns, they would be mounted towards the front. For more information about galley warfare in the period, Andrew Tzavaras of New College, Oxford, recommended to this author the following volumes: Niccolò Capponi, _Victory of the West: The Story of the Battle of Lepanto_ (New York, 2006) and Phillip Williams, _Empire and Holy War in the Mediterranean: The Galley and Maritime Conflict between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans_ (London and New York, 2014). This author has not yet had the opportunity to read them themself, but is assured they are the latest word on the subject.

[2] Again, using the _lieue ancienne_ based on the Royan foot. This distance is roughly equivalent to 16.25 kilometres.

[3] This author has spent way too much time watching YouTube videos about medieval plate armour this past week, and highly recommends the channel of Knyght Errant.


	8. Capitolo VIII, in che la storia vera & famosa del naue ‘Beata Amaltea’ finirà

_Capitolo VIII, in che la storia vera & famosa del naue ‘Beata Amaltea’ finirà_

 

> There is little that can be said about the tremendous impact that Cavalcanti had at Val Royeaux that has not already been said. From the earliest days of Exaltations scholarship, historians like Eschhardt, Visconti, and Corriell have recognised this one mage-scholar’s disproportionate contribution to the intellectual project of the Exaltations. This is all the more telling in that Cavalcanti was, himself, not an author on par with the great humanists of the time, such as Leone Rossi or Giorgia Varassi. But rather, the triumph of Exaltations thinking and humanist ideology sprung from the thirty-eight printing presses Cavalcanti was allowed to set up in Val Royeaux. First, of course, came the first edition of the Royan Chant of Light, set in an entirely new type based on the Divine’s handwriting and designed as much as a tech demo as a book in its own right. But we know from surviving copies that this first print run was never intended to achieve mass circulation so much as to advertise the Divine’s grand project to the pious aristocrats of the Empire.
> 
> No, it wasn’t until Cavalcanti and his successors had refined their technology, their type, and their organisation enough to produce the third edition of the Royan Chant that any copy of the Maker’s word spread more widely outside the learned echelons of society. Miniscule and efficient, not many of these tiny, cheaply-printed books have survived into our time, but we do know that the wide dissemination of Chants to village chantries across Thedas made clerical and lay literacy skyrocket over the Steel and Storm Ages. With it came a voracious appetite for reading material, an appetite that Cavalcanti and his rivals now springing up all over the Empire were more than happy to feed. In 5:68 Exalted, Cavalcanti issued a new edition of Gallian translated into Orlesian Common, followed by the orations of Vigilius and Stabion Misenon’s _Natural History_ and a host of  other classics dear to the humanists’ hearts. The effect they had on readers in Orlais, and the imitations and home-grown scholarship they sparked, are arguably a key impetus for such far-ranging changes as the development of the arts, impressive scientific advances, the birth of the modern state and the reformation of the Circles.
> 
> One cannot help but wonder what Marsilio Cavalcanti may have felt when he first set foot on the ship that was to take him to Val Royeaux. He left no diary, memoirs or _ricordanze_ , and his letters to his friends are conspicuously silent on what transpired during the journey – leading one to suspect that the reclusive landlubber spent much of the voyage in ill health. Regardless, he must have felt a sense of trepidation at the changes he was about to facilitate, and pride to see his work validated by the highest religious authority in Thedas. Or perhaps he was entirely unaware of what significance history would assign his work until much later in his life, when he wrote to a friend who was considering moving to Val Royeaux: “in this city, which has been much improved since my arrival by the tireless efforts of its prefect, one yet still lives quite badly. Yet I am not discontented to be here, for I have had no small role in occasioning many changes for the glory of the Maker, the human race, and our endeavour of bringing light back into the darkness. If, my beloved friend, you should come here, you would no doubt find as I did that here your talents and ideas are held in greater honour than at home, and people are eager to listen to your advice, as they did to mine.”

– Jean Dury, _Marsilio Cavalcanti: Mage of His Age_ (Val Royeaux, 9:28 Dragon)

 

 

 

> We do not know much about Curtis Darmond’s early years. In the National Archives of Ostwick, a deed certifying his entry into the Templar Order as a squire survives; his mother paid nearly twenty-four sovereigns for his admission and her own entry into a monastery. This suggests that the Darmond family was not altogether wealthy, and that his father was either dead or absent. It was, however, in the Templar Order, which at the time maintained a small fleet of galleys, that young Curtis presumably acquired the navigational knowledge that would later make him famous. It is not known on what ships or in which actions he served, or when he got his first command, as the records of the Templar Order’s admiral’s office were lost in a fire in 7:21.
> 
> He must, however, have conducted himself with some renown, for in 5:79 he was given command by the Divine of a small flotilla of three caravels, to scout east across the ocean for the legendary homeland of the Qunari then threatening Thedas from the north. Setting sail the next year, he finally reached around noon of 12 Harvestmere 5:79 Exalted the archipelago that would come to bear his name, and was thus the first person known to have set foot on the New World since the exodus of the Qunari an age and a half before.
> 
> As is well-known, early hopes for a prosperous settlement and exploitation of these lands soon proved overly optimistic – after the arcane disaster that resulted in the ecological devastation of their homeland, the Qunari had been right to flee, and what few of their people had remained were soon all but wiped out by Thedosian diseases and arms. Only now, using modern technology, has it become possible to permanently settle in large parts of the New World. Darmond’s discovery did, however, fundamentally shift the worldview of all Thedosians. Suddenly, the old paradigms of the world were shattered. The exploration and charting of the New World, arduous though it was, and the ordering and discovery of its native species of flora and fauna ultimately was one of the key causes of Thedosians’ exploding interest in the natural sciences. From advances in mathematics and astronomy via alchemy and magic to anatomy and medicine, nothing remained as it had been. Curtis Darmond’s discovery of the New World was the discovery of the Old World, as well.

– A.E. Collins, _A Brief History of the World, vol. 3: The Age of Reason_ (Denerim, 8:12 Dragon)

 

 

 

> **La Tour de Montsalvat, Justine Celest[ine] Genevieve** (* 5:25, † before 5:60). Fourth daughter of - > **Celestine Marguerite** and -> **de Cremons, Ferraud Argent**. Joined the Templar Order 5:38, knighted 5:43, possibly captain 5:45. Little is known about her life and her ashes are not located in the family crypt.

–  _Dictionnaire de la noblesse orlesienne à l’époque exalté_ 29 (Val Royeaux, 9:12 Dragon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed it (or not), please leave a review!


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